Something Good
by Ilandra
Summary: The movie, with added scenes, mostly from the Captain's point of view.
1. Local Urchins

A/N: Much thanks to the person who started the SOM category, and all the authors of the stories on this list.  I've read them all, even if I haven't gotten around to reviewing yet, and your stories (combined with a sudden violent renewel of the SOM obsession) inspired me.

This offering attempts Georg's thoughts on Maria etc.  I hope to add more chapters with more scenes—some extended scenes from the movie and some original (after the Capt's return from Vienna but before the puppet show; after the Maria/Georg gazebo scene, the wedding night—maybe :o)  However, I haven't got any of that written yet, so tell me if you like this—or if you don't, so I know if I should keep it up.  I know it's short and doesn't really explain where the fic is going to go, so any criticism is completely welcome.  I love hearing from fellow obsessees :o)

Beware: I am a member of the Society For The Fair & Kind Treatment Of The Baroness.  I believe I am the only member :o)

*

Chapter 1

Captain Georg Von Trapp contemplated the lady beside him with affection, admiration, and not a little bit of wonder.  She really was one of the most beautiful women he'd ever seen.  Not just her body or her face, though they created quite an impression—but the grace of her movements, the charisma of her smile, her innate understanding of the world she moved in—all, from the beginning, had struck him as particularly lovely.  Of course, he hadn't told her that in the beginning.  He had kept his distance, as he always had.

"Good heavens, what's this?" she asked—more, he suspected, because she felt some comment on the sudden noise and bother necessary, than because she actually expected anyone to be able to answer her.

After all, neither Max nor he knew what was going on.  "Oh, it's nothing.  Just some local urchins," he said dismissively.  He returned his attention to the road and the pleasant thoughts of Elsa, barely looking at the numerous ill-behaved children swinging in the trees, making a general disturbance to the—

Numerous children.  In fact, there were about eight of them, except at least one or two of them looked like adults, which meant that there could indeed be only seven children, Lord help him, making a general disturbance of the—

Well.  It couldn't be.  But the governess—the governess bothered him.  The fact that he could even _consider _that those children might actually be his was evidence that he should not have left home when he did.  The governess—Fräulein Maria, was it?—was irresponsible, out-spoken, inelegant, and downright rude, and he should have taken care of her before he left.  Who knew what she could have gotten the children up to in his absence?  Last time he'd seen them, they'd been dancing around in their pajamas.

And yet, none of the children—even Louisa—hadn't been 'up to' anything in a long time, except to get rid of the governesses they had already.  The Captain knew a bit of the trials his children put their governesses to, though usually if it came under his direct attention he stopped it.  His children were not meant to be ill-tempered pranksters, after all—but the truth of it was: the victims were only governesses, and while tormenting them was one of the only times his children ever smiled.  

In fact, he'd been rather amused at the pine cone in the Fräulein's seat shortly after her arrival—but, to the children's disappointment, and to his surprise—and strangely, pleasure—she had handled the situation well.  The children, he thought, had rather hoped that Maria would reveal the trick, incensing their father—first on the count of disturbing his meal, second on the count of accusing his children of trickery, third on the count of not disciplining his children enough to prevent such pranks in the first place—and resulting, all in all, in the dismissal on the new governess on the spot.  

Dismissal at that point, for those reasons, would have been unfair and illogical—neither of which the Captain usually was—but the children, he suspected, were hoping for a record, and he, to tell the truth, had simply been eager to see what the woman would do.  It struck Georg then: that the only connection he had to his children was in shocking governesses—but the insight did not strike him in so many words, and he soon dismissed the notion completely.

"You have that brooding, longing look again.  Is it for me?" Baroness Elsa Schraeder's voice interrupted his thoughts.  He didn't mind.  In fact, her voice had been the thing, before anything else, that had drawn him to her.  He had met her at parties many times, noticed her beauty, her poise, her intuitive mind—had even shared in conversation with her, noticing her social grace, her charming—almost political—manipulation of conversation.  But it was only on a quiet night, in a much more secluded gathering of his friends in Vienna, that he had heard her voice clearly and decided that he would approach her; he would pursue her—Heaven knew she was not unwilling to be pursued by him.  

To his displeasure, she'd laughed at the thought, when he finally disclosed it to her: that her voice was musical.  'Music?  I know nothing of it!' she'd declared gleefully.  'Sing?  Not a wit!'  And yet, still, her voice had song in it, and it drew him, reminding him of—

Well, never matter what it reminded him of; he liked it, and she was asking him another playful question, leaning against him where they sat in the automobile.  "I said, is that look for me, Georg?  If it is I don't want it.  It's very unattractive; don't you know?"

"What look?  I have no idea what you're talking about," the Captain said, coming out of his reverie and glancing at her for a moment, smiling.

"Did you hear that, Max?  He doesn't know what I'm talking about.  You know what I'm talking about, don't you Max?" she asked, gaily feigning indignation.

"Of course I know what you're talking about, pet," Max said easily.  "I always know what you're talking about.  Our minds are alike—it's Georg that's the mystery.  Neither of us understand him.  That's why we both like him so much."

"Heavens!  Now _I _don't know what _you _are talking about," Elsa said, and sat back in her seat, away from Georg.  She didn't bother to reassure everyone in the car that she understood Georg perfectly.  They all knew it wasn't true.

Elsa was a woman of penetration and insight—she often understood him, when no one else did.  But she was used to being able to see right through people, to manipulating them, especially to knowing how to deal with them.  He was different than the other playful, smooth-talking aristocrats she had known, and Georg knew it was so, even if he didn't appreciate it.  To some extent, Max was right—and this Georg did _not _know: his complexity _was _why she liked him—and also why she feared him.  If she couldn't understand him, how could she hold him?

Elsa straightened her back and smoothed her hair under her scarf.  "We're going to have a glorious time," she announced—to herself, to the car in general, or to Georg, no one knew, not even Elsa.

The Captain, however, smiled.  Elsa may not know him through and through, but he could not expect her to, and it was comforting to know that just now, she knew what he was thinking.  He knew that when she had asked whether his brooding and longing look was for her she had been hoping, rather than truly suspecting.  That look was for home, and Elsa had always known it.  Elsa—beautiful, enterprising and unafraid Elsa—understood that look, understood why he hated to come home, understood what bringing her there meant—and was telling him it would be alright.  They would have a glorious time.  He knew that Elsa would strive to make sure of that, and that was the best that he could hope for.


	2. The Argument

A/N: Sorry for the repost.  A terrible error came to my attention (thanks so much, Jelpy :o) and I had to fix it before anything grievous occurred.  It was just a spelling error; nothing is different.  Thanks :o)

A/N:  Wow, thanks for reviewing and encouraging me on this, y'all :o)  Here's my next attempt…for whoever really wanted to see The Argument, I'm sorry this only picks up the end of it—but I find that when I'm really angry, it's difficult to be thoughtful, and since I'm doing the Captain's thoughts in this fic, I didn't want to write a bunch of: "Who does she think she is!"   I hope y'all like it anyway.  

After this, I hope to go into a bit of the Captain and Maria 'getting to know each other better' in some scene I want to make up—so tell me if you like this or want more, please.  Also, again, any criticism is much appreciated (imnotinacommittee, I think you're right about my sentence structure; I tried to make it a little more easy to read in this chapter :o)

Thanks again for all your kind words,

Ilandra

*

Chapter 2

"I am not finished yet, Captain!"

"Oh yes you are, Captain!—Fräulein," he amended.  It had been a long while since he was too furious to speak straight.  In fact, the Captain wasn't quite coherent enough to form complete thoughts that were little more than curses and obscenities, and even these weren't fully formed in his mind.  His mind, in actuality, was drawing a deep, red blank, that was, in short, incensed that any woman would attempt to tell him who he was, who his family was, or what his family meant to him.

Love them?  _Love _them?  Could she possibly have any idea what loving them meant, having only known them a month, not seeing their mother in Brigitta's brown eyes, in Kurt's hair?  She had no heaven or earthly _idea _how much he loved them—and the fact that this women—this _girl—_this _governess—_would presume to tell him— And she was supposed to be a nun?  Cloisters, indeed, were the best place for her—somewhere where other people wouldn't have to deal with her—her—good God.  It was too much.  "Now.  You will pack your bags this minute, and return to the Abbey."  He saw her face fall, and was pleased.

And music was playing somewhere.  In this place, that was as incongruous as the governess yelling at him.  "What's that?"

"It's singing."

She was done yelling, it seemed, but there was a nagging thought in the back of his mind that she would never get done being difficult.  "I know it's singing," he replied, letting the annoyance show.  "But _who _is singing?"

"The children."

"The children?"  He half turned, looking up in the direction of the sound.

"I taught them something to sing for the Baroness."

She'd taught _his _children to—he didn't quite believe it.  He walked slowly toward the house, his disbelief slowly being overtaken by—wonder, by memory, by a heartache that had never left him.  

It had been too long.  Liesl used to—God, she used to sit by his knee, staring up at him with those wonderful eyes of hers, just drinking in his voice as he—and Brigitta—Brigitta wouldn't even remember, now, how she'd climbed in his lap, and demanded his songs before bedtime, not her mother's—and Agathe—oh, Agathe. . .

He could hear Kurt's voice in among the others, because he had trouble controlling it; it was getting to the point where it broke at times.  When had it started doing that?  Why hadn't he heard it before?  _I taught them something to sing . . . something to sing . . . _Because they had known nothing.  Liesl, and perhaps Friedrich and Louisa, would be the only ones who would remember how it used to be, how they used to sit together . . .

He moved toward the house like a man in a dream—or perhaps, a man just awakening from a nightmare.  Inside, he moved more slowly still, suddenly unsure what he would find—but at the open door, his eyes could not help but fall immediately upon the spot where they stood: in their uniforms and rows, smart, trim—exactly as he had wanted the baroness to see them.  And yet not, strangely, how he had wanted to see them.  These children—these were older.  He could not even tell whether he remembered the song they sang.

He remembered Liesl on her knees, proffering a guitar; he remembered Kurt in the corner sulking, because he thought singing was for girls; he remembered Marta running and tripping over baby feet into her mother's arms—and Agathe, Agathe in white, looking at him with dark and loving eyes.  He remembered this song as it was then—and yet, it was the same song, the same melody, the same words.  He could feel it thrumming within him.  These were _his _children.  He remembered loving them; he remembered wanting them; he remembered needing them—And when he joined them he could tell that Liesl remembered too—that Friedrich wanted to remember, that Brigitta, even though she didn't know if there was anything to remember, wanted to know.

She was right.  He had given her so little credit—understanding what she said, knowing it in his heart, but not knowing what to do about it.  He hadn't acknowledged it; he'd brushed her mentions of it off—but she had known from the beginning.  In fact, one of the very first things she'd said to him was: "Georg von Trapp, are you lost?  Do you need finding?"  She had been standing there, elegant as always, a glass of champagne in her hand, white-blonde hair twisted up above her neck as she tilted her chin and gazed up at him—smiling, teasing.  

In that moment, Elsa Schraeder had brought meaning back into his life.  He had been alone for too long, not wanting it to be different, not caring.  Other women had noticed it too, perhaps, but it had been Elsa that made him realize it.  It had been Elsa who had made him want to be whole again, made him want to find the things that had been missing in his life.    

 He'd just hadn't been looking in the right place.  His family was here, in Salzburg, not Vienna. Even this morning, Elsa's insight had been clear: she had known—known that he was running away from this place.  No other woman would have dared to challenge Captain Georg von Trapp that way, by accusing him of cowardice, except for Elsa.  And except for—

That, perhaps, more than anything, was what was wrong with him: no one would stand up to him.  His world was a mass of faceless enemies.  He had raged against the death of his wife, but his anger had been hopeless.  He could sense the Nazis now, converging on his country, but they were too many and too underhand, and no one would stand with him against them.  Every breath he took, he felt as if he was striving and fighting for nothing.  There was nothing he could do about anything.  

"Edelweiss!" Elsa exclaimed.  

The Captain looked up over Brigitta's head.  It was easy to understand, seeing Gretl in Elsa's arms, edelweiss in Elsa's hands, that the reality Elsa had giving meaning to again hadn't been as bad as he'd thought.  He loved his family; he loved his country.  For the first time, he realized that one of these was perhaps not lost.  

"You never told me how enchanting your children are."

The reply that hung before him was simple, obvious: _I didn't know they were.  I didn't tell you, because I didn't know.  _

He knew now.  He knew that they had once captivated him—once made him want to know them, intimately, knowing every detail of their lives so that he could help them through it—he knew that they still possessed that quality, and that he regretted ignoring it for so long.

And that little governess Fräulein _had _known it; and, what's more, had known that he_ hadn't_ known.  The children knew, too; they were looking toward the door, where he could see the edge of a dripping skirt.  And then it was gone, and Fräulein Maria was hastily making her exit—because he had told her to.  "Don't go away," he murmured to his children—something, perhaps, he should have once told himself.  _You're never home long enough to know them…_

"Fräulein—"  he called, striding into the hall after her.  It was important that he do this now.  In this world that seemed to be all fraud and loss, he didn't want to have been the first to shoot down someone who actually believed she could change things.  He didn't know how long he'd allowed himself to believe things _couldn't _be changed; he just knew he didn't want to be a monster—or a weakling—in her eyes. "I—behaved badly."  Not used to apologizing, he hesitated.  "Forgive me." 

"Oh, I'm far too outspoken.  It's one of my worst faults."

"You were right," he confirmed.  "I don't know my children."  He hated the fact that he had come to this—a father who didn't know his own children—and yet, at the same time, he was marveling at the women before him.  Somehow he'd become a cynic, ignoring the things around him that were important, that he loved—but he had once been like her, so full of conviction, so right, so strong. 

"There's still time, Captain.  They want so much to be close to you."

"And you brought music . . . back into the house again," he mused, ignoring her, letting the realizations strike him one after another: that she had been right; that she had forced him to face truth; that she had awakened him to love and beauty and so many things he hadn't remembered.  "I'd forgotten . . ."  

For all that Elsa might have awakened him to the fact that there were some things missing in his life, it was this little governess that had seen fit to do something about it.  He had been so eager to show Elsa his children—and yet it was this woman who had made him see them as they really were, for the first time in a long time.  He wouldn't have come to it, on his own.  In a way he hated to admit—he needed her.  

The governess had begun to turn away.  "I want you to stay."  At her startled look he realized suddenly—painfully—how accustomed he'd grown to command, even of his children.  _They fear you, _she had told him.  

Half the governesses had probably left on _his _account, not the children's—and yet he had the idea that _this _one would still be on the patio, bawling him out, if he hadn't played his trump card, dismissing her on the spot.  He was ashamed, now, of having used that power over her.  The truth was he had been afraid—afraid that if the argument had gone on any longer, he might have seen that she spoke truth.  She had been strong where he had been weak, and deserved more than equal treatment, if not some modicum of civility.  "I _ask_ you—" he amended—"to stay."

"If I could be of some help," she replied, rather hopefully, looking at him with clear and brilliant eyes.

He wanted, strangely, to take her in his arms and shake her.  Here she stood, dripping wet and shivering, looking almost vulnerable—prepared for his disapproval, knowing she was troublesome and outspoken, because everyone had always told her so.  And yet, not ten minutes ago, she had been anything but weak, full of her impassioned pleas, reaming him out for everything he deserved.  

What she was, he decided, was honest—and pure in a way that made him suddenly remember edelweiss and Gretl, 'clean and bright' in Elsa's hands.  "You have already," he said steadily, remembering those symbols of the things he cherished most, safe in the baroness' delicate white hands.  In that moment, he'd understood that he had only one choice, no matter _how _hopeless the world may seem: hold on.  Hold on to his country, his family, his convictions, and never, ever let go.  And it had been this governess who'd taught him how.  "More than you know," he added, and turned away, before his heart could suddenly jump into his throat. 


	3. The Aftermath

A/N: Thank you so much for all of your reviews!  You guys are very insightful and help me to understand what you like about the story, so I know what to write next.  You've inspired me to get on a bit of a role, here :o)

However, a warning: I'm attempting to fill in some of the time between the famous Argument and the famous Singing of Edelweiss While Looking Longingly at Maria scene.  I think there must have been some really sweet moments when Georg and Maria got to know and understand each other better—imo, this is when they really fall in love.  However, as evidenced by the movie, which completely skips over this whole time period, nothing actually _happens _between them_.  _I'm afraid of these scenes lacking substance.  So, if you find this chapter boring, tell me, and I can rework some upcoming chapters.  In short, any advice/criticism is appreciated :o)

*

Chapter 3

The ordeal with the governess taken care of, the Captain now fixed his attention completely on his children.  He had a moment to watch them privately as he re-entered the sitting room—to notice that Brigitta looked taller, that Marta was losing teeth rapidly, that Liesl suddenly seemed more mature and self-aware than she ever had.  

"_We _didn't know either," Friedrich was telling Max confidentially, among the general chatter of the baroness and his other children.  

"It was Fräulein Maria," Marta said with a small, bright smile.

The children became quiet as they noticed their father's presence, turning to look at him curiously as he closed the doors behind him.  Georg looked at them blankly, feigning innocence.  "What was she, Marta?" 

His children stared at him a moment, the curiosity palpable and awkward in the air.  "It was Fräulein Maria who taught us how to sing," Brigitta supplied into the silence, but no one else spoke, eyes fixed on their father.

"She must be quite a governess," Elsa replied gracefully—but her brow was raised as well, glancing questioningly at Georg.  She must have known that he had stayed behind expressly for the purpose of remonstrating Fräulein Maria, even for the purpose of dismissing her.

There was a general reply of agreement with Elsa, from Liesl's 'Oh _yes,' _to Gretl's giggle and profession of love, ending with Kurt's: "So nice Louisa didn't even want to do the spider thing this time!"—which suddenly made the children fall into a rather chagrined hesitation.

"Father," Brigitta started suddenly—rather bravely, Georg decided—"where _is _Fräulein Maria?"

All of the children looked at him.  Elsa wasn't the only one with a head on her shoulders; even the youngest were able to fathom that he hadn't been pleased with their Maria—that he might have done something awful to her, even.  Georg sighed inwardly.  And he had done, hadn't he?  "She's changing out of her wet things, naturally."

"Didn't do the _spider _thing?" Max interjected jovially, naturally eluding any uncomfortable conversation.  "Louisa, what _is _your brother talking about?"

"I haven't done it," Louisa said pointedly, still looking at her father, "because I _don't _want Fräulein Maria to leave."

"Leave?  Who said anything about her leaving?" Georg answered her, stepping toward Louisa until his hand touched his daughter's face, and the angry question in her eyes disappeared.  "I am sure she'll stay for a very long time."  He looked around him, at the relieved faces of his children, and said dispassionately, "A very very long time.  She says your voices are atrocious, and she won't leave until you can do something more than off-key squalling."

"She did not!" Kurt said indignantly—and every single one of his children laughed.

*

"Where's Fräulein Maria?"

"How old are you, Marta?" Georg asked, dropping Elsa's arm for a moment and looking down at his youngest daughter but one.

"Seven," Marta replied, looking up at her father and scowling.  They hadn't seen their governess since shortly after she fell out of the boat.  Now it was already dinner-time, and she was still nowhere to be seen.  Despite all that he had done to reassure them, his children still seemed to think that either their father had fired their governess, or that she wouldn't want to stay after whatever treatment he had meted out on her.  Georg hid the thought from himself that they could very well be right.

"Seven!  So old?"  Georg squatted down next to his daughter, a slightly sardonic smile on his face.  "Now tell me, Marta, why should a lady your age be asking for her governess every other moment?  You act as if you couldn't get along without her."  

"It's because we like her," Gretl explained simply for both herself and her sister, and the Captain stood and sighed.  He glanced at Elsa, who was returning his gaze with a knowing smirk.  He was glad that she was amused by this, even if she _was _laughing at him.  It was a trifle ridiculous, now that he came to think of it.  The children had been asking for their governess for a solid hour—it was not exactly the reception he had planned for Elsa.

"Anyway, why _shouldn't _she be here?" Brigitta asked pointedly, as they walked on into the dining room.

"The workings of your Fräulein's mind are beyond me," Georg replied.  "Incidentally, Marta, did you like your birthday present?" he continued, adroitly changing the subject as he pulled out Elsa's chair and they all sat down to dinner.

"She wouldn't stop waving that dratted umbrella at me," Kurt complained.

"Don't say 'drat,'" Liesl admonished, as Marta nodded, blushed, and said, "Thank you for having it sent.  All the way from Vienna!" she paused and looked at her empty plate.  "Fräulein Maria bought me some pink gloves to go with it."  Marta paused; then, plaintively: "Is she coming yet?"

"I'm hungry," Kurt said steadfastly, staring at his plate also.  "Where did you say Fräulein Maria was?"

"He doesn't know," Louisa said derisively, wrinkling her nose as her father rolled his eyes.

"This looks wonderful," Elsa said politely, looking at the food spread out on the table and smiling at the children.  Apparently she at last feeling sorry for him, Georg assumed, amused by Elsa's attempt to save him and take Fräulein Maria off his children's minds—but he was a trifle put out as well.  He'd wanted his children to respect Elsa—to get to know her, even to befriend her.  Instead they were whiney, and constantly begging for their governess. 

Max smiled back at the Baroness in response.  "Let's not waste all the good cooking then.  Let's—"

"Don't we have to say grace?" Liesl interjected.

"We can't without Fräulein Maria," Gretl announced.

"Where is she?" Marta chimed in, not for the first time that minute

"I'll go get her," Friedrich offered, jumping out of his seat.

"No," Georg said at last, managing a forced smile.  He could tell his children loved their governess; they seemed to love her as much as they had hated all the others combined—even including Fräulein Helga.  If it was Maria they wanted, Maria they would have.  He wanted to make sure Maria knew that too—that as long as she continued to do what she had done for his children, there should be no hard feelings between them.  He threw his napkin down on the table and stood.  "I'll go.  Liesl, I'm sure you can lead our family and guests in grace.  Sit down and eat your dinner, Friedrich.  Please excuse me Max, Elsa."

"But—" Friedrich began, half-way to the door.

Georg's brows shot up.  His children seemed to be well aware that he hadn't exactly been polite to their Fräulein earlier today—but did they actually think he was going to inflict bodily _harm _on their _governess_?  "I said sit down," he repeated, in a voice they all knew well.  Friedrich sat.  "I will bring her down—kicking and screaming, if necessary," he assured Marta, who was still looking worried.

He exited the dining room with a fluttered: "Of course, Georg," from Elsa, and a rather excited "Do you really think she's going to kick father?" from Gretl, and a blustered, uncertain: "No, silly," from Kurt.  The Captain, actually, couldn't help laughing.

*

"Fräulein?" he asked, thudding a knuckle on the frame just as her door swung open.  She was dressed for dinner; she was just late, as usual.  At least she meant to come.  And she was no longer sopping wet, also a plus.  He had expected as much, but he was beginning to expect the unexpected where this woman was concerned.  Indeed, he'd been half afraid he'd find that she'd tied all her sheets together and escaped him out her window, he'd been so ill-tempered this afternoon—then again, he shouldn't have thought so little of her.  She didn't seem inclined to run away from much.

"Captain?" Maria replied blankly.

He blinked, realizing he'd been staring.  She'd availed herself of the materials he'd ordered—definitely another plus.  Though she still didn't look very much like a governess—too young, too bright-eyed—too pretty, actually, now that he thought about it, and said immediately: "Well?  Are you joining us for dinner or not?"

"Dinner?" she said, blinking.  "Well yes, if you all want me.  I'm not—"

"Well then, come along," he said peremptorily, turning from her doorway to the hall beyond.  "That is—if you please," he amended, pausing to offer her his arm.

"Thank you."  For the first time, he saw her hesitant, and then she took his arm.

They were silent for a moment, walking down the stairs.  He could sense her discomfort.  If she could do for his children what she had done, the last thing he wanted was for her to be ill at ease with him.  She was a link, in so many ways, to these past years he'd missed out on being a father to them.  Not to mention that he admired her—and he didn't admire many people; that was for certain.  "Allow me to apologize again, Fräulein, for—"

"Only if you'll forgive me," Maria exclaimed, stopping to look up at him.

"Fräulein, there's nothing to—"

"Oh yes there is," she explained, reassuring him.  "Everything I said was true—only, I really shouldn't have said it the way I did.  I simply _had _to, but it was really awful of me, and I _know _it will never happen again, so you needn't be afraid, and—"

"Fräulein." 

"Hm?" she asked, innocently surprised by his interruption.

He had dropped her arm, and now stood looking down at her with something akin to incredulity.  "Fräulein," he began again, cocking his head somewhat derisively, "am I given to understand that you consider—_that_—to be an apology?"

He hadn't meant to be harsh, but he _had _meant to throw her off her guard.  He'd forgotten all over again that sternness, apparently, didn't work with this woman.  She merely blinked several times, and replied simply: "Well yes, Captain."  

He stared at her, eyes hard on hers; his gaze, to her, cold.  Perhaps his look _was _rather critical, for at the moment, he was trying to decide whether she was brave or just naïve.  Both, he was thinking—but the thought was not a criticism, and the look he gave her wasn't either.  In so many ways, he was looking at himself, wondering when it had come to the point that he expected people to always defer to him.  Perhaps it had begun when people had stopped telling him the truth—when his wife had died and the female socialites had turned out in full force to 'catch' him, when Hitler rose and Nazis came to his door murmuring niceties that he saw through and detested.

 Maria raised her brows and tilted her head.  "Er…Did I say too much?"

"Fräulein Maria," he said softly, turning a little to look at her quite clearly.  "In the future, you must remember to say what you will, how you will, when you will.  And you must remember that you are free, Fräulein, to say as _much_ as you will."  Maria looked at him blankly.  Inwardly, the Captain was amused.  If he yelled at her, she gave as good as she got—it was only his sudden, incomprehensible gentleness that unsettled her.  "Only—don't apologize for it," he continued blandly.  "You're singularly dismal at it."

She looked like she hadn't believed there was a teasing bone in his body.  In fact, she was flushing, her mouth open a little bit, looking at him as if he had just told her he wanted her to teach the children to ride elephants.  Georg swallowed his smile and turned to continue toward the dining room.  He would enjoy disconcerting her like this in the future.  She really was rather pretty when she—

For a moment, Maria stood stock still behind him, watching him walk ahead of her with a somewhat shocked expression.  Recovering, she found her voice.  "Erm—" she muttered, catching up to him.  He again offered her his arm and she took it, still seeming as if she was looking for words—or courage.  "I was wondering then, sir, whether I mightn't ask you whether the children—"

"Fräulein," Georg said, stopping again, the smallest hint of exasperation in his voice.  "Can't it wait until after supper?"

Her brows shot up as she turned her startled head toward him.  "Well yes.  But you said 'whenever I will,' so I thought—" 

"Yes, yes, but not at _dinner _time, Fräulein.  Kurt will have begun eating napkins by now, not to mention Max.  And there's one young lady in particular who is so anxious to see you, she might drown herself in her pea soup if you don't come soon enough."

"Marta?"

"Baroness Schraeder, of course," Georg replied, straight-faced, and pushed the dining-room door open for the governess.

*


	4. The First Morning After part i

A/N: There's not very much Maria/Georg action in this chapter.  I'm sorry for that—I really am degenerating into writing plotless chapters.  But it's _fun—_and I'll keep doing it, if you want me too :o)  Thanks so much for your kind reviews!  Some of you are wonderful writers yourselves, so it's really encouraging hearing more from you (not to mention that the bunnies have attacked, and you've given me inspiration for more SoM stories.  Ahhh!  Bunnies!).  As I always say, tell me if you get bored or have criticism.  It helps me out.  The next chapter has quite a lot of Maria/Georg to make up for this one :o) 

*

Chapter 4

"Where are your lovely off-spring?" Max asked, without much concern, as he continued to dig into his breakfast.  Georg and Elsa had finished a while ago, but consented to sit with him while he satiated his voracious appetite.  Elsa had lit up and was sitting back coolly, Georg was watching Max with a certain measure of incredulity than anyone could eat that much.

"They—most of them—are in the school room, happily drilling away," Georg replied laconically.  "They breakfasted over an hour ago."

"Oh, earlier risers," Elsa mourned, putting a templed hand to her forehead with mock sickness.

"Not early—reasonable, and perfectly appropriate," Georg said, a mischievous smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.  Elsa, much like other ladies of her class and experience, was decadent—in taste, in fashion sense—and in sleeping hours.  The thing that he liked about Elsa, though, was that she was well aware of her own extravagance.  Insight, at times, was almost as fresh as simplicity.  "Tell me, darling," he began, with a hint of flirtation in his voice, "had I called on you in your room at half past eight, would you have been dressed?"

"Speaking of appropriate behavior, I really _shouldn't _allow that line of conversation to go further," Max said regretfully.  He looked up at his breakfast companions, who were eying him skeptically.  Max regarded them blankly and explained earnestly, "I'm here as a buffer, aren't I?  I should use what little authority I have.  However, this bratwurst is so delicious," he went on, looking down to his plate, "that I'm sure I will miss anything indecent either of you say.  'Tis a pity, really."  

"Max," Elsa said, her voice half giggle, half remonstrance.  "You really do make an _awful_ chaperone."  

"Isn't that why you brought me?"  Max returned.  "It's alright that I've found you out, Georg.  I don't mind being used."

"Used?  Oh Max, really.  As long as you get to stay in Georg's villa for the duration, am I right?" Elsa teased.

"Naturally," Max said easily, still eating.  "Where else would I stay?  It's alright.  So long as I'm fed properly, all secrets are safe with me."

"We don't have any secrets, Herr Detweiler," Elsa said, her voice dropping, looking sidelong at Georg as she said it.

"Really?" Max replied, playing at curiosity, and then took another bite of his sausage

Georg ordinarily probably would have joined in the banter, because charming abuse of Max was, to all three of them, one of their most amusing entertainments—as first of all, Max deserved every word, and second, Max didn't seem to mind a bit.  But Georg's mind had obviously slipped off in another direction, and for the past minute, he had seemed to find the wall of the breakfast room fascinating.  

Georg had been doing that more and more often, lately—losing himself in thought.  The thoughts were not pleasant—which was why he was so fond of Elsa.  Usually, she could recall him to _her _world—a world that wasn't falling apart, a world like her idea of Vienna: sparkling dinner parties for the wealthy and well-to-do, witty and flippant conversations about politics that didn't affect anyone with a title and without conviction, a sense of beauty, liveliness, and youth that would carelessly go on, despite the changes it went through.

"When am I going to see the little darlings again?" Elsa asked him smoothly, correctly guessing the direction of his thoughts, and wisely sensing that she was not going to change that direction, at least for now.  "Or have they all run away, in dread of seeing me again?"

"Darlings?" Georg replied incredulously, raising his brow at Elsa over the breakfast table.  He smiled, as he always did when she drew him out of his moods, but the smile was distracted, as was his voice.  "Gretl and Marta are darlings, I'm sure, and Leisl is lovely.  The rest you will find, I'm afraid, to be incorrigible rascals and hoydens, unfit for your delicate company," he said easily, with half a smile.  "Or wasn't it you that Friedrich kicked under the dinner table last night?"

"Don't be hard on him, dear," Elsa said, laughing.  "He's at that awkward age."  She smiled wickedly and Max laughed, but Georg continued looking at her steadily.

"Which is hardly 'darling'," he replied.

"I'm not sure whether she wasn't being facetious, Georg," Max said blithely, cutting into his breakfast sausage with renewed zest.  "What was it then, Elsa?  Are they darlings or not?"

"I'm sure I don't know," Elsa said, laughing carelessly.  She tapped her cigarette on the tray at her elbow with negligent elegance, and then returned her gaze to the man in front of her.  Despite her easy grace, her eyes studied him—as if trying to find answers to questions she wasn't asking.  

Georg understood her questions just as well as anyone at the breakfast table.  He knew what she had been insinuating the morning before: that being here with him was exciting because he was showing her parts of himself he hadn't shown to the other socialites in Vienna, that knowing his home and family would bring her closer to him.  He was fairly certain that she had understood _his _meaning as well, and had shared it with Max: that he wasn't sure.  She was lovely, witty, clever—all the things he had said—and yet he had to see her here; yes, as he had rather facetiously put it: in his own natural habitat.  He needed to see her in his home and determine whether her light, insightful way of taking his mind off heavier things was viable here—to see whether he would still feel the need to leave here as often as he did, to see whether he could stand to replace Agathe in any way.

Elsa had not planned, he supposed, on dining with all of his children and the governess their first night here.  They were used to private meals in Vienna, or large feasts with witty, intelligent conversation—not slurping soup and the occasional kick under the table.  In a way, Elsa was asking whether he approved—but they both knew the answer.  As Max had said, though Georg had not heard: "How could she miss?"  Elsa had handled the evening with the grace with which she took everything; she had borne it in exactly the same way she might have taken a meal with any number of her sophisticated friends in Vienna.  

Elsa had steered the conversation away from both the children's wet appearance that afternoon and Fräulein Maria's subsequent absence.  And she had greeted the governess with the warm confidentiality of women, which Georg had never understood, and which had seemed to disconcert Fräulein Maria.  But it had been the Baroness' friendliness to her that seemed to have at last convinced the children that he was not going to do anything untoward to their governess, and for that, at least, Georg was extremely grateful.  Elsa's light, witty humor had kept Georg from brooding too much over regrets: his treatment of the children's governess yesterday, and, more importantly, his treatment of the children for the past five years.  

Yet now, the Captain preferred to brood.  Light amusement was all very well—especially after such a lack of it for so long—but it was not going to change anything.  And yet, things had changed.  "Elsa," he began, thoughts still distracted.  "I'm going to spend today here, at the villa.  I won't have you confined, though.  You may do what you like."

"Bad form, Georg," Max remonstrated, wiping his mouth and finally throwing his napkin over his plate to signify that he was done.  "You said you were going to take Elsa to call on your friends in Salzburg.  Not to mention you let drop that you 'friends' have connections to the director of the Klopmann Choir."

"Have I told you yet today that you're an unconscionable, self-interested boor, Max?" Elsa said, the seriousness in her expression not for Max, but for Georg, who seemed to understand that her teasing interjection was merely for form's sake.

"I know I did, Max," the Captain replied, looking at Elsa.  His voice grew sharp as he turned to Max.  "But I do believe I may do as I please in my own house—and I please to spend today with my children, thank you."  He stood then, pushing back his chair.

"No need to get prickly, Georg," Max replied, looking up.  "I was just looking after Elsa's interests."

"But Max has no notions of my interests," Elsa said softly, her eyes still locked on Georg.  "I please to spend my day with _you, _Georg—and so, if I may do what I like," she added, standing as well, "Max must go visit your friends alone."  She smiled at Georg, who smiled in reply and took her arm.

"It appears," Max said, sighing and looking at the empty breakfast table, "I _have_ no friends."

Georg laughed as he opened the doors to the breakfast room.  "Only if you continue to sulk, Max.  Elsa, here, might consent to put up with you while you finish showing her the rest of the grounds.  She is sophisticated, that way.  What do you say, darling?"

Elsa, on his arm, tilted her head to look back at Max, who was following behind.  "I'm sure I could manage to pretend I don't dislike him," she told Georg, laughing.

"Well then," Georg replied, dropping Elsa's arm.  "If you'll excuse me, I have business to attend to.  I shouldn't be more than an hour."

"Oh, business," Elsa said, with exaggerated drama and a hand at her temple.  "Business is the Captain's mistress."

"But she keeps tabs on the wealth, dear," Max interjected.  "Don't mind her."

Georg, more amused than annoyed, cast his eyes heavenward.  "Max, _do _remember your own your best behavior," he said dryly, and took his leave of the Baroness.

*

Strangely, Georg was glad to be rid of the two of them.  Gay as they both were, this morning they were giving him a head ache.  And yet he had awakened today feeling more vigorous than he had in a long time.  It had been long before Elsa—or Max—had even begun to stir, but the morning had felt so clear, so crisp—the way it does just before snow, though it was summer.  He remembered what he had told Elsa—about 'the birds and the bees and the wind that moves through the trees like a restless'—well, something-or-other.  Smarmy poetic nonsense, really, but it was true: he felt at home here.

In the next moments he'd heard laughter and singing echoing through the house—a wonder that it hadn't awakened Elsa—and he'd marveled at how much he'd missed it, how right it seemed in this house, despite the fact that laughter had been rare here in these past few years, and singing nonexistent.  It was then that he'd understood the renewed energy in his chest, the feeling of vigor strangely fresh in him: he had something to do, here.  It was wonderful to work, he'd thought, to actively fix something, instead of watching helplessly from afar.  He would not do so for the Nazis—and nor would he for his family.  He could right the things that had been wrong—he could come to know his children again.  

He had gone to the school room to see the children, but the view of Kurt and Friedrich sitting diligently at their desks, of Brigitta lounging in her corner reading, of Leisl helping Gretl through her alphabet and some simple spellings, and of Fräulein Maria's golden head, bent close to Marta's, reading out of the lesson book—had filled him with a strange sense of something he hadn't felt in a long time: peace.  

He hadn't wanted to disturb them.  What he had wanted to do, oddly, was sit down and watch them—watch them, in part, because they had changed so much and he wanted to know them again, but also because he'd wanted them to stop changing: he wanted to freeze the moment, to always remember them looking so content, so happy.  He'd wanted to look at them and think that they would always be able to be this way, together, as a family, in this house, without a care for the outside world.  But he'd known it would all change—knowing that his children had changed already, that he didn't know them any more.

Now pensive, considering this, Georg again paused as he approached the lesson room.  The children were gathered about Fräulein Maria, their backs to him as they talked and laughed with their usual uproar.  "Alright, children," Maria was saying.  "Brigitta, it's your turn.  It was Kurt's yesterday, climbing trees and boating—"

"Brilliant idea," Louisa muttered moodily.

"It wasn't _my _fault the boat tipped," Kurt retorted indignantly.

"None of you told me you weren't boatmen," Maria said innocently, shrugging.

"You almost got her fired," Brigitta announced, looking reprovingly at Kurt.

Georg's brows shot up, but he remained silent, hands locked behind him as he stood in the shadows of the door and listened.  "Brigitta," Fräulein Maria admonished.  "How many times have I told you—?"

"—not to gossip or unduly speculate," Brigitta replied in monotone, obviously saying something she had memorized and had had to repeat many times.  "Yes, yes.  Is that a nun thing?"

"But Father _was _very angry, wasn't he?" Marta asked, her little piping voice quavering.

Kurt rolled his eyes.  "Silly, that's why he was going to fire—"

"Kurt!" Fräulein Maria said over their voices—they all spoke quickly and on top of each other, firing comments back and forth until Georg could barely understand what even the loudest comments above their general din were.

"If it were _my _turn," Gretl announced wistfully over the top of them all, "I would want to spend the day with Father."

"So would I," Brigitta agreed, "but he wouldn't want to spend it with us."

"Why not?" Gretl demanded.

"The Baroness is here," Liesl explained simply.  "That makes things different—doesn't it, Fräulein Maria?"

"I don't see what _she _has to do with anything," Louisa, muttered, looking petulant, while Marta said plaintively: "The Baroness has white hair.  _And _she has a mole."

"Children—" Maria began, her voice sharp.

"Do you think she's a witch?" Kurt asked, sounding more excited than anything else.

At that moment, Georg decided it would be wise to make his presence known.  He stepped forward into the school room, a very real scowl on his face.  The noise ended abruptly.  The children—startled, and a little confused about what to do—scrambled into their lines.  Fräulein Maria, surprised, looked as if she might say something, but the Captain's glare was directed at his children.  "You were saying, Kurt?" he demanded.

"Well . . . I . . . we . . . think the Baroness . . . well, looks—"

"He doesn't actually want to know, stupid," Friedrich told Kurt, and then fell silent under his father's stern look.

Georg turned to the governess, his eyebrows raised.  He could sense the worried glances of the children, exchanged from one to the other.  They were protective of their governess.  "And this is the discipline you've kept around here while I've been gone, Fräulein?" he asked her, his voice neutral.

"No, only since you've returned, Captain," Maria replied.  Georg blinked at her frankness, but her brow merely lifted inquisitively at his narrowed eyes.  It seemed to be a challenge—and she went blithely on.  "They're quite happy to see you, you know," she informed him.  

"Hm," he said, his face puzzled, as if trying to figure her out.  He waved a hand at his children, his eyes still studying Fräulein Maria's open, clear expression.  "You may dispense with the lines," he told them laconically.

"Father?"

Friedrich's voice.  "Go on," he said, sparing them a glance and waving his hand again.  "They're no longer necessary."  He glanced at them again, feigning surprise at their lack of obedience.  "Well, do you _like _standing about in the order of your birth?"

"No, Father, but—" Brigitta began.

"_I _don't like it," Gretl said stridently, hands on her hips in imitation of one of her older sisters.

Georg found a smile creeping up to his face as he looked at his out-spoken youngest daughter.  It was strange; he could feel in his mouth that he was unused to smiling.  He went to lift Gretl up into his arms, now really smiling at her delighted giggle.  "There now, that's better, isn't it?"  She nodded, a smile full in her chubby cheeks, her plump arms wrapping around his neck.  

Gretl's way of clinging to him was instinctive, but holding her, he realized how long it had been since he last lifted her.  When had she gotten so heavy?  Georg was suddenly intensely aware of Fräulein Maria, who was watching him and the children with open fascination.  Had she imagined him too much of a monster to even hold his children?  Perhaps he had been, at times.  "And what were you saying Gretl, about how you wanted to spend the day?" he asked her seriously, turning his attention back to the load in his arms.

"With you, Father," Gretl replied simply, straight-forwardly.

"And so you shall," he affirmed.

"Really?" several of them said at once, at last breaking up, murmuring among themselves as seven children are prone to do, pressing up against him the way they did when they were sure he wasn't angry.  He looked down at them in surprise—and not a little bit of pride—in their love for him, their need for him, their spontaneous joy in his company.  His full attention was enraptured by the many bodies seeming to press around him, and he found their laughter almost contagious.

"All day, Father?" Louisa added, skeptically.

"Well, that depends," Georg replied, chuckling.  "How did you sleep, Louisa?"

Louisa looked surprised.  "Ill," she said finally, frowning.

"Any nightmares?"

"She too old for nightmares, Father," Gretl informed him, her cheek still close to his.

"Really Gretl," Georg replied, looking at Louisa with a raised brow.  "And Kurt, how was breakfast?"

"He's still hungry."

"Naturally, Friedrich.  And you've not been getting into too much trouble, I hope?"

"Friedrich?  Trouble?  You shouldn't ask," Brigitta said archly, her expression knowing—but her eyes gleaming as her father smiled at her.

"And Brigitta, read any good books while I was gone?"

"Ever so many," she affirmed, grinning.  "You were gone a long time."

"Well then, I suppose it's settled.  It seems as if I shall have to spend all day with you, just to find out what's happening to you all."  He smiled as their murmurs crescendoed into a general racket, and he could feel Marta hugging his legs while Brigitta fought her way—among others—into his embrace.

"We have ever so much to tell you Father!" Gretl announced, bouncing in his arms.

"Oh?" he asked jovially, walking toward the door, his children moving with him.  It was a good feeling, to have them loving him like this, looking up to him—but not fearing him.  Their pure, innocent joy, their love for him, was a beauty and a justice where he had not sought them.  "Well, out with it.  What have you got to tell me?"

"Fräulein Maria taught us how to sing!" Marta exclaimed, amidst the chatter of the other children.  She'd left off hanging onto his legs and was somewhere behind him.

"He already knows that, stupid," Kurt hissed, attempting to shush her.

"Oh yes," Georg murmured gently, turning around to find Fräulein Maria.  He'd half forgotten she was there; the old feeling of being one with his boisterous family overwhelming his usual awareness of a relative stranger.  The governess was a pace or so behind the bunch; Marta had fallen behind to take her hand.  Maria was looking down at his daughter, quietly smiling—but feeling Georg's eyes, she looked up and met his gaze openly.  "Gretl," Georg said, taking his eyes off their governess and putting down his youngest child amidst the others by the door to the schoolroom.  "Can I trust you to look after your brothers and sisters for a while?  I'm going to have a word with your Fräulein Maria."

"Oh," Gretl said, giggling, looking up at her older siblings—but the rest of them were silent.

"Father," Brigitta began suddenly.  "You won't—"

"Not a word, Brigitta.  You'll leave now, while I have a word with your governess."  He waved his hand, shooing them out the door.  They seemed reluctant, obviously recalling his stern voice as he'd questioned Maria's discipline, moments before.  "Go on.  Do that thing children do—what is it you called it, Fräulein?—'play'?"  Liesl smiled at his joke of feigned ignorance, but Louisa was looking at him suspiciously, and Friedrich didn't seem to want to trust him.  "Run along, children," he said dismissively.  "Play."

"Go on, Marta," Maria said, with an encouraging smile, and let go of Marta's hand.  "Do as your father says.  We'll only be a while."  The smile faded as she looked toward the Captain.

Georg watched as the children, still reluctant—with last longing looks at Maria, as if they would never be seeing her again—trouped out.

"Do you think he's going to fire her _now?" _one of them asked, and another one hushed the voice.

*


	5. The First Morning After part ii

A/N:  Thank you all _so _much for all the kind reviews.  I'm writing a couple of chapters ahead, and it's getting difficult and imo, icky, but when I find out someone's reading and liking it it gives me incentive :o)  As always, if you're bored or confused or think I reek, tell me, and I'll be glad to hear it.  **Maria's Georg, **thanks for the head's up: I was trying to say that Elsa, much like other ladies in her class, was decadent, not that she was more decadent in her class than other ladies.  Do I need to change that line?  (I like the word decadent too—and the word sensual :o)

As for cliff-hangers—I'm glad some of you are eager to read this next part!  I didn't mean it to be a cliff-hanger.  When I sit down to write I just write, and never think about where chapters should be.  I really meant 4 & 5 to be one chapter, but I had to split it up after I wrote it.  Btw, **imnotinacommittee**, that's my defense: in this chapter, I use a 'line' from one of your reviews, but I'd already written this before you said it!  (great minds and all that :o)  I do admit that I stole two phrases in this chapter from Bronte, because I'm too lame to think of things myself.  But gah, it's not like I ever said I was original.  Disclaimers and all that.

*

end of Chapter 4:

Georg watched as the children, still reluctant—with last longing looks at Maria, as if they would never be seeing her again—trouped out.

"Do you think he's going to fire her now?" one of them asked, and another one hushed the voice.

*

Chapter 5

"Fire you?" Georg inquired, once all his children had left.

"I don't know where they got the idea," Maria replied affably, shrugging.

The Captain's look was of disbelief.  "You don't."

"Well, to tell you the truth, I suspect Brigitta," Maria said, with a reluctant smile.  "She really does have an uncanny sense about things."

"Does she indeed," Georg mused, his statement rhetorical, not a question.  "Fräulein Maria," he began, his hands behind his back, forcefully facing the little governess.  "My children, when I entered, were speaking of—did I hear it right?—turns?"

"Yes, Captain," she replied agreeably, meeting his stare directly.

"And these—turns, you call them—?"

"Everyday one of the children decides what we will do for the afternoon," she explained, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.  "If it is in my power for us to do what they ask, we do it.  It was Kurt's turn yesterday; now it is Brigitta's.  Tomorrow it will be—"

"Yes, I see," he interrupted, cutting her off by turning away.  His feet resorted to a strident kind of pacing.  "And you do remember, don't you, that I informed you on your arrival that every afternoon, the children would march about the grounds—for fresh air and exercise?"

"But we often spend the afternoons in outdoor activities.  Why yesterday we—"

"Did I, or did I not tell you, Fräulein?"

Her expression hardened as she met his eyes.  He remembered a conversation very similar to this one, the night of the thunderstorm before he had left for Vienna.  She looked down, swallowing a sigh.  "You did, sir."

Georg, hands still hooked behind his back, strode over to one of the windows of the school room.  He stood looking out the gaps between the curtains, his posture—straight and forbidding—silhouetted in the frame.  Slowly, with an inaudible sigh, his hand stretched out to pull one of the curtains back.  It was still beautiful out—the grass as green as anything, the sky so blue it seemed to sing with a voice of its own.  He couldn't think of anything he'd less rather do on a day like this than march about the grounds.  He pursed his lips and half-sat, half-leaned against the sill of the window, his eyes still locked on the view.  "Fräulein," he began again.

"Yes?"

"Yesterday, we had an—exchange of words, shall we say?  In a raised voice—you will recall—you informed me of your—opinions—about my own children; and, what is more, you proceeded to tell me how to deal with them.  You _do _remember that, don't you Fräulein?"

"I do," came the small, hard reply—but there was edge in it.

"You were, I think, not in your best temper?  A little hot-headed, perhaps?  Mayhap you spoke quickly, without proper thought?"

"Sir, I do not—"

"What I am driving at, Fräulein," he said, carelessly interrupting her as he finally turned from the window to look at her again, "is that perhaps you did not finish what you were saying, yesterday."

"Sir?"

Her voice was startled and perplexed.  He looked back at her, with half a smile.  Yes—there was that flushed, surprised look again.  "Fräulein," he told her simply, standing up to face her fully again.  "I may be a brute, but I am not a hypocrite.  I told you yesterday that you might speak freely, and you may.  In fact, it is my wish that you do so.  It's true that I am not used to being disobeyed—" he held up his hand to stall her talking—"but if you find fault with my instructions, I expect you to come to me—and, in my absence, to trust to your better judgment—as you have done.  And quite well, I might add.—Why do you look that way?" he inquired.

She looked positively shocked.  "You're—trusting to my better judgment, sir?"

"Yes," he said, tilting his head.  "Is something the matter with that?"

"Oh _yes, _Captain!" she exploded—obviously still shocked.

"And that would be—?"

"I have none.  I have no better judgment, that is," she affirmed simply, her voice flustered.

Georg found himself laughing.  "And who told you that?"

Maria's lips pursed as she looked down at the floor.  "Sister Berthe, the Mistress of Postulants."

"Sister Berthe," Georg mulled, still chuckling.  "Do you know, I think at times, I've rather felt akin to Sister Berthe?"

"Oh yes, I believe it," she interjected, her voice rushed and earnest.  "When you first started talking I thought I had better kiss the floor and get it over with right away."

"Er—kiss the floor?" Georg inquired.  She sounded relieved, which amused Georg.  She might not show any fear in facing him down—but she was certainly glad to hear she wouldn't have to.  

"I told the Reverend Mother," Maria was saying.  "Sister Berthe always made me kiss the floor whenever we'd had a disagreement.  Before I left I'd taken to kissing the floor whenever I saw her—to skip all the bother, you know.—Is that funny?" she asked, startled at his laughter.

"No—it was the look on your face."  She was, in fact, a refreshing conversationalist—because she was not a conversationalist at all.  Elsa had first attracted him because at times she had the knack for saying the unexpected—a kind of courage-of-the-drawing-room, he liked to think, a way of saying exactly the thing that everyone was skirting around and subtly alluding to, but that no one dared mention.  He liked the element of unpredictability—but with Elsa, the characteristic was a tool, a way to steer conversation, to manipulate it, to draw attention where she wanted it.  Fräulein Maria simply said whatever popped into her head because it was in her head.  She was naïve; in a way she was simple—but he found he rather liked it.  _"_Never mind.  Don't kiss the floor, please—at least, not just before any meals."

"Alright, Captain," she replied, looking at him a bit warily.  Georg regarded her for a moment, amused.  Regarding him in that way, the governess actually looked rather like Brigitta, as if she couldn't quite trust that he wouldn't make her kiss the floor in the end, anyway.  

"To get back to the matter at hand, Fräulein," he said, looking away to hide his laughter, "I have been away from my children for over a month.  In some ways, I have been away longer than that—as you so intrepidly pointed out."  There, the blush again.  "At any rate, I was wondering if you had any further insights, apart from those you so graciously bestowed on me yesterday afternoon?"  Her color was half in embarrassment, half indignation.  "Forgive me if I'm flippant, Fräulein Maria," he said, his voice softer, gentler.  His behavior, yesterday, had been far worse than hers; he didn't want her thinking he resented hers. "I really do want to know."

She looked back at him, surprised, and now a touch rueful.  "I suppose I am rather a hot-head," she said, chagrined.  "I can't even remember what I said then."

"Well," he said, his voice returning to normal, amused at the deploring regret in her voice.  He cocked his head, as if in consideration.  "I do believe you called me a devilish boor who had neglected his children to a shocking extent.  That I—what was it?  Brush them aside, ignore them, and—don't love them?" he finished inquiringly, mouth quirking.  

"Oh," Maria responded, deflated.  "Well, then, I told you everything you needed to know."

A sharp bark of laughter escaped the Captain before he could control it.  "Touché, Fräulein, touché," enjoying her response more than a little—the governess was actually making _fun _of him.

"I'm quite serious, Captain," she told him earnestly, brows raised at his laughter.  "The children have already improved tenfold, just due to your return—not in behavior, perhaps," she conceded, but only momentarily—"but certainly in spirit."

"They're just relieved that they don't have to march about the grounds breathing deeply any more."

"Well, there is that," Maria conceded, laughing.

Georg paused, startled.  He wasn't sure he'd ever heard her laugh before—except, perhaps, directly after the pine cone incident.  Strange, since the Fräulein has such a way about her of happiness and contentment—the children smiled whenever they were with her.  Her laughter, oddly, reminded him of the children—that fresh, bright sound—the sort of sounds he longed for in the dull, gaudy nights of Vienna. "And you have nothing more to tell me of them?" he demanded, more hurriedly than he meant to.  His voice gentled.  "How about Louisa?—I didn't see her in the lesson room earlier this morning."

"Oh."  Maria paused, looking half-reluctant.  "Well—Louisa has a penchant for. . . shall we say . . . erm—wildlife, Captain."

"Wildlife, Fräulein?"

"Insects in particular, Captain.  I caught her trying to coax some beetles under the Baroness' door this morning."

"The Baroness?" he repeated, his brows shooting toward his hairline.  Suddenly, he found himself laughing.  He could imagine Elsa, waking up from her luxurious drowsing to find herself surrounded by beetles.  It would not have been a pretty sight.  "And what, pray, do the children have against the Baroness?" he queried, managing to keep his voice even.

"Oh, they left a toad in my pocket, you know.  I think it's their little way of saying hello."

"The 'precious gift.'  Oh, I see," he murmured, a hand against his chin as he turned again to walk toward the window.

"Though Brigitta _did_ say," Maria continued blithely, "that the only reason they play so many tricks is because they don't know how else to get your attention."

"Oh she did, did she?" he demanded, without turning around, his voice sharp.  His attention had been gotten, thank you very much.  As amusing as the idea of beetles in Elsa's room _was, _he didn't like the thought of his children getting into trouble without his knowledge—worse damage than _that_ could be done.  He was angry at himself, more than Maria, but his tone did not betray him.  It was very possible that more grievous damage _had _been done, on quite another front, now that he thought of it.  "Yesterday afternoon," the Captain began suddenly, abruptly changing subjects, "I exited my house to find a young—shall we say . . . acolyte?—of the glorious Third Reich—throwing pebbles at my eldest daughter's window.  You wouldn't know anything about that, would you, Fräulein?"

Maria's brows shot up.  "Acolyte of the—?"

"A young soldier, Fräulein," Georg supplied impatiently, with disdain—but, Maria realized with a start, not for her, not even for the boy—but for the Third Reich itself.  "He delivers our post—?" Georg went on, questioning whether Maria knew of whom he was speaking.  The governess, however, remained silent.  Georg snapped around to face her.  "I said, Fräulein, do you have any idea of this boy's dealings with my daughter?"

"That would be Liesl's business, wouldn't it?" Maria replied neutrally.

Georg's voice was removed, cold.  "But I am asking _you, _Fräulein."

Maria met his eyes openly.  "I don't know the boy, Captain."

"Yes, but you know of him," Georg snapped.  "Well?" he queried, impatient.  "Don't you?"

Maria's face remained clear, not at all perturbed by his tone.  "Nothing beyond what you say, Captain."

"Fräulein—are you being difficult—" he faltered for a moment, knowing he should be indignant, and yet not the least surprised—"on _purpose?"_

"Well . . ." Maria began, for the first time uncertain.  "I suppose I am, Captain," she answered, her voice reluctant and apologetic—but not giving an inch.

"And you were this way often at the Abbey, Fräulein?" he asked wryly, raising an amused eyebrow.  His ire had been for form's sake—for getting information out of her he truly wanted—not because he truly felt any—at her, anyway.  But now even that anger slipped away, as he regarded the Fräulein before him with amusement and incredulity—and not a little admiration.  She was so very—

"Oh, all the time, Captain," she assured him, her voice half expressing frustration.  She earnestly met his penetrating gaze, and for a moment she was startled by the intensity in his eyes.  Her own eyes widened minutely, and she suddenly looked down—not, he suspected, out of deference.

He studied her bent head for a moment, recalling once again the uniqueness of her reactions: if looked at her coldly, her eyes met his straight on—snapping fire, even.  If he merely looked . . . intrigued, she was unsettled.  He could see heat flaring once again in her skin.  "You are," he began, searching for a word for what she was, and finding none that suited, " . . . a rare breed, Fräulein Maria," he finished, his voice low.  

Then he waved his hand dismissively and immediately turned on his heel.  "We were speaking of Liesl," he said decisively, pacing away from her to stand beside one of the children's desks—Brigitta's multitude of books piled on the top of it.  It wasn't even Brigitta's desk.  "Can you tell me why it is, Fräulein, that you feel the need to protect my daughter from her own father?"

"It's not protection sir," Maria interjected hastily, finding her voice again.  "It's—erm . . . I wouldn't want to betray her confidences, Captain, and as for that—she's given me little enough.  Some things she will come to you on her own about—and some she just has to figure out for herself."  Maria paused, the Captain looking at her expectantly, brow raised.  Maria shrugged and plunged in.  "If there's something between herself and this boy, Liesl herself has to be able to define it herself before she brings it to you.  When a young woman discovers—such things—she needs time . . . and patience."

"Really, Fräulein," Georg replied, with that exquisite dryness for which he was known—in Vienna, his biting sarcasm and apparent irreverence made him as famous as his name.  But though his expression remained sardonic, he smiled a little, and his voice was gentle—though with edge.  "And what would a governess, a postulant half-raised in a convent, know about—'such things'?"

Fräulein Maria's lips fell open, and she immediately looked down.  "Nothing Captain, I admit," she apologized, her voice suddenly small.  

He immediately regretted mocking her naiveté.  Just because she was innocent didn't mean she was inexperienced, and just because she was raised in a convent didn't mean she couldn't be wise.  In fact, he had had plenty of women tell him the same thing.  'Women are slow, as men always say, Georg,' Elsa had once told him, her soft voice amused and indulgent.  'A man, I'm sure, knows what he wants as soon as he looks at a woman—and loses interest just as quickly.  We women take forever to figure out what we feel and what we want—but we're also far more tenacious, darling, so be careful.'  Elsa might be more worldly, but Maria obviously knew at least part of that was true.  

He wondered what experience the Fräulein _did _have with 'such things'.  He didn't like the idea of hurting her, of causing her to recall something she'd rather not, of accusing her of an ignorance that was forced on her and that she regretted.  He stepped toward her, his arm unconsciously stretching to lift her chin with a knuckle, so that she would again be looking at him directly with her bright, clear eyes.  "Head up, Fräulein, where it should be," he murmured, and his hand fell away.  "You'll forgive the lapse," he told her, stepping away, his tone again normal.  "You are right—it's not as if I can suddenly step into my children's lives and change them, can I?"

Maria slowly shook her head, eyes still on his, though his own had fallen away.  "No, Captain—but you can help them.

He was heading toward the door, wanting to be gone from the room quickly.  Now he paused, looking back at her thoughtfully.  "Thank you, Fräulein," he said, the sincerity evident in his voice, and turned the knob on the door out.

"Erm . . . Captain?"  At his pause and half turn, she rushed onward.  "You said that I could—that is—speak freely?"

He raised a brow, his pursed lips hiding a smile.  "Yes, Fräulein?"

"Er—yes.  Well, when it was Brigitta's turn two weeks ago, she wanted to put on a play.  I told her there must be a place around here where we could rent a stage, and costumes and so on."  Her eyes were bright, and she was gesticulating—seemingly carried away by the idea.  "Only," she went on, talking fast, "I told her she'd have to ask you when you arrived. . . Er—naturally, she doesn't want to _bother _you, sir, but she has such a vivid imagination, and she reads so much—I'm sure it would benefit _all _the children, and—"

"Fräulein—are you asking me to rent you a . . ." he paused, looking rather doubtful, "a _stage_?"

"Yes sir," she replied, nodding simply.  "For the children to play-act on."

Georg closed his eyes for a moment and reopened them to find her clear, curious blues regarding his.  "And how will this—this—"

"Play-acting."

"Yes, play-acting—mould their characters into better, more upright young adults?" Georg inquired, his tone still doubtful.  Her ideas were—imaginative.  Playing, climbing, singing, acting—next they would be puppetteering.  He almost laughed aloud at the thought.  Instead, he murmured, quite calmly, with an air of condescension: "Are you preparing them for a life in theatrics, Fräulein?  Are my children going into stage-acting?  Or perhaps, Fräulein, your eye is cast toward the motion pictures?"

"Well, _no_, sir—"

"Uh-huh," he snapped, "—that will do, Fräulein.  We'll simply have to see."

"See?"

"Didn't you hear what I said?"

Her incredulous face was breaking into a smile.  "You mean you're going to consider—"

"Don't get you hopes up, Fräulein," he cut her off, coldly, and strode out of the lesson room.  He carefully closed the door behind him—and, for the first time in a long time, positively grinned.

*


	6. Setting the Stage

_Please feel free to skip the very long A/N if I annoy you.  But beware._

A/N: Alright,  a bit of explanation: At Vanessa's lovely SoM forums there's a great deal of speculation about where Maria gets the famous Blue Dress, so I thought I'd supply my own theory in this fic.  I thought I'd just throw it in there, as I wanted a few things for Georg, Maria, and the children to do before we got to the puppet show and what comes after.  However, I decided that if I just casually mentioned the Getting of the Dress it would be weird, so I decided to make a chapter of it.  It still seemed weird, so I did a kind of lead up.  Then there was more lead up, and all of a sudden, this travesty occurred.

Now, suddenly, there are three chapters that don't have quite as much Maria/Georg interaction as I meant them to, and in fact have certain other perfidious interactions.  In fact, Emilyn just said on the forum that she could never imagine this happening, but here I had it, already written.  Forgive me.  

I did consider cutting this chapter and the two chapter continuation of it (all in the name of explaining the Blue Dress Wonder!) that seemed to spring like Athena from my head, but in the end, I decided to keep them.  I think they show a more natural progression of the Captain's feelings than a lot more immediate Maria/Georg interaction (like we all want :o) would have, and there _are _many nice moments for that couple—just more gradually than I had planned, with a lot of missed moments and willing denials and certain somethings with another person to stave off unwanted thoughts.  However, as I have said before, I can see how all of this could become quite tedious.  If you get bored, as always, please tell me, and I'll look at the next two chapters and see if I can tone them down a bit.

However, this chapter ends on a good note for our happy couple, so don't get so disgusted by the first part that you don't go on :o)  Please keep an open mind, and do realize one important fact: Captain von Trapp is a man.  Heh :o)

Also, just wanted to say that all of you are very kind to review, and that knowing people want to see the next part helped me out in posting this sacrilegious chapter (it's not that bad.  Really).  So please, don't be afraid to tell me what you think.

*

Chapter 6

"Where _is _that other child of yours, Georg?" Elsa murmured, tapping her cigarette on the balustrade of the terrace.  It was a gloomy morning, but the Captain did so enjoy his grounds, and as such, Elsa naturally enjoyed them too.

"My dear?  Which one?" he replied absently, forearms resting on the banister, looking thoughtfully out toward the river.

"I meant Max, darling," Elsa said, teasing reproof in her voice for his lack of perception.

Georg chuckled and shifted his complete focus to the woman beside him.  "You know Max, Elsa.  He always has some business or other he imagines needs tending."

Elsa laughed heartily.  "Max?  Work?  Tell me you're joking."

"I don't know," Georg said, laughing as well.  "Every once in a while I get a _glimmer _of the idea that Max is his own man."

"Really, darling.  He admitted it himself; he's only a very comfortable sponge.  A barnacle on your bathtub.  Tremendous fun, I'm sure, but—"

"Elsa, my dear," he interrupted, teasing.  "Can it be that you miss him?"

Suddenly Elsa looked away, tilting her head at that exquisite angle that exposed her neck to him.  "No.  No, Georg, I can't say that I miss him, today." 

He understood her change in tone immediately, as he had also understood her meaning when she had looked up into his eyes and told him she was 'searching' too.  He had laughed and ignored it, because she had misinterpreted his own meaning, or manipulated it to her convenience.  He was not looking for a spouse, per se.  He was looking for that element in his life that was dead or missing—and so much of that had to do with his family, he'd realized since.  

But Elsa had a part in it too.  He was simply trying to figure out in his mind where she fit in, how she fit in, what her stake was in this game of making himself whole.  He had to try to _place _her here, in his home, with his family—in _Agathe's_ place.  "It could be dangerous," he quipped, regarding her sardonically.  "You, me, alone—"

Elsa laughed.  "In your backyard," she added, "with your seven children inside, probably peering out the windows."

"My children do not spy," he said solemnly.  "We're not interesting enough."  Elsa looked away again, and Georg studied her.  Perhaps she took his words more than a little to heart.  They'd had very little chance to be intimate in these past weeks.  He had spent with his children, laughing at their choices of things to do when it was each of their turns, and promptly going out of his way to accommodate those choices.  

Friedrich had wanted to go fishing, which had made Liesl protest and Gretl wrinkle her nose, but Georg had taken his two sons out alone to the very best spots that his own father had taught him when he was Kurt's age—which had made the five girls protest, even the ones who'd been originally appalled by the idea, because _they_ wanted to spend all day with their father also.  Gretl had wanted to go to a fair; Brigitta had wanted to go riding; Louisa each and every time chose the exact same thing—a picnic outdoors, 'with everyone,' she'd add, pointedly looking at her father.

There were days, Georg now thought, when Elsa probably regretted coming at all—getting dragged about here and there, having to listen to seven children laugh and squeal and cry—and sing, always singing.  But Elsa, truly, never seemed to mind it.  As always, she handled everything gracefully—right down to Kurt's demand for a food fight, which nominally, Georg hadn't approved of, but had let go on so long as he and Elsa were far from it in another room, leaving their Fräulein Maria to attempt to put a halt to it.  

He had been neglecting Elsa sorely, he realized, looking down at her.  His love for her was different than it had been for Agathe, but he knew that was as it should be—and, in his own way, he _did_ love Elsa.  He loved what she had given him; he loved her with a gratitude that bordered on a greater depth he longed for.  

And he _wanted_ to be with Elsa.  He wanted to want her.  Thinking this, Georg looked down at the woman before him.  In fact, _wanting_ her—that cool, calm poise, that sexy distribution of curves before him—_that_ wasn't difficult at all.  When she was this close, her sophisticated femininity made it easy to believe that her 'place' may very well be as he sometimes imagined it—beside him, married to him, his wife.  "Let's spend the day alone together, for once," he proposed, his hand wandering to her temple, her neck, fingers idling with a stray curl she had let dangle over her nape.

"Alone?  With _me_, Georg?" she asked, her tone teasing as she feigned innocence.  He didn't answer, his hand instead seeking her hip, resting there in a sort of casual possession.  "You don't need to take time out for me, Georg," she told him seriously, voice gentling.  "It's not your responsibility to keep me entertained."

He might have laughed.  He might have teased her, told her how ladies of the well-bred, decadent sort needed to be entertained, lest their minds begin to wander—but, looking at her in this way, his thoughts were not bent on humor.  His thoughts, in fact, were converging on something that tended toward incoherency the more he let himself think about it.  He tightened his hand on her hip, drawing her closer.  "I _want_," he said, breathing into her lips, "to take time out for you."  

Then his mouth was on hers, covering hers, and she was responding passionately, eagerly, drawing him to her.  It changed the course of his thoughts, startling him.  How long, he wondered, had she been waiting for this?  He had kissed her before, naturally, but theirs had been a casual courtship—the sort that could go on for years as they dallied here and there, dancing around each other with a knowing awareness—and at the same time the sort that could end in engagement any moment.  For his own sanity, he rarely let himself get carried away, and even his thinking was monitored in that respect.  And for propriety's sake, those moments of intimacy he had allowed had been short, innocent, and relatively rare.  He'd never touched her before in a way that hinted at a declaration—but this, what they were doing now, bordered on one.  

Thinking this, and hearing a sudden uproar beginning in the house, he pulled away.  Her lips clung to his for a moment, and then she pressed them together, retreating in a way that was a preservation of her dignity.  As much as she had wanted him in that moment, she knew that in some ways he was still uncertain of her, guarding them against a future commitment they might regret.  Still, for once in her life, Elsa Schraeder felt more than a little unsettled.  She laughed a little breathily and lit up another cigarette, the first one have gone out, forgotten, on the balustrade.  "My my," she said finally, mustering up amusement, changing the subject as if they had only just been speaking of the weather.  "What _is_ all that racket?"

Georg took measure of her for a moment, thinking.  He didn't know any more than he had when he first brought her here, he realized, whether he was ready to ask her to marry him.  The question made him uneasy; desire made him restless.  Slowly, almost visibly shaking himself, he focused on the noise coming from the house.  "Shall we darling?" Georg proposed, holding out his arm to her, so that they could re-enter the house and find out what the children were making such a din about.

*

There was a great deal of commotion in the foyer.  Strangers were moving back and forth from outside the front door to the ballroom on the right.  Georg could hear the children clamoring in there, and, for a moment, he frowned.  He'd thought he'd told their Fräulein that that room was off limits.  It hadn't been opened up since Agathe had died; he hadn't been in the mood, since then, to throw balls or parties.

"Max, you beast," Elsa was saying, hitting her friend lightly on the chest.  "What were you thinking, leaving me alone with Georg?  My honor could have been compromised."

Max seemed to be in the midst of all the traffic, and somehow the cause of it too.  He was directing people carrying boxes this way and that, as Georg looked around him, scowling.  Max made some reply to the Baroness, but Georg was already striding into the ballroom, miffed at the delivery boys, but heading straight to the source of all such mischief: the children and their little Fräulein.

The room was in chaos, but Georg stood still within it—slowly beginning to smile.  There were open crates everywhere, packing straw littering the floor.  His children were chattering excitedly, getting in the way of the delivery men, and their Fräulein Maria looked harried, as happy and excited as they were, but desperately trying to keep them under raps, as she herself helped them open boxes and set things up.  In the middle of the room, most of the stage was already erected. 

"Oh Captain!" Fräulein Maria exclaimed, at last catching sight of him as she straightened from looking into a big wooden crate.  A bit of straw was in her hair, and she was beaming.  And then suddenly she was flying toward him, and he half expected her to throw herself at him and wrap her arms around his neck.  Instead she grabbed his hand and heartily began to shake it.  "This is wonderful!  Positively exquisite.  The children will _love—"_

"Er—Fräulein," he reminded her, and she realized she was still pumping his hand.

She hastily dropped it, but her expression was still enthralled.  "I didn't you'd listened.  I didn't think you were going to get it."

"Oh you didn't, did you?" he replied dryly, regarding her with some amusement.  His restlessness was melting away in sight of her honest enthusiasm—and in sight of his children, of course, fairly ripping apart the boxes and crates, discovering their contents.  He was amused at the idea of a stage and puppets, straw and laughing, the dancing children—and their one, outrageous, beaming governess—replacing the memory of all the gaudy lords and ladies going through the motions of lackluster dance, as they once had in this old room.  He should have opened it up for play long ago.  He raised a brow at the governess.  "You thought I'd miss the opportunity to spoil my children terribly, and buy them needless, useless presents?"

"I thought you'd _forgotten, _actually," she replied whimsically.  She peered up at him, her gaze serious, but her smile remaining.  "I never did doubt that you want what's best for them."

"Didn't you now, Fräulein?  And that was your first thought, was it, when I so graciously showed you out of this room the morning you arrived?"

"Oh no," she replied, shaking her head earnestly, ignoring the fact that he was teasing her.  "But that's what I was thinking a bit later, after you started blowing on that ludicrous whistle."

Georg's brows shot up.  "_Ludicrous, _Fräulein?"  She spoke far too freely for a little convent governess—and yet, he could not even begin to be anything but amused by her satisfied expression.

"Well, don't _you _think it was ludicrous, Captain?"  

He regarded her for a moment, the innocent, challenging lift of her brows, the clear freshness of her blue eyes.  The questions he had found himself asking earlier were forgotten in the back of his mind;  unease was forgotten in the laughter Georg felt beginning somewhere deep inside of him.  It was ludicrous; this was ludicrous; _she _was ludicrous, what did it matter, anyhow?  

The children, finally having noticed his presence, were shouting at him to come see the thing in this box or that; Gretl was stumbling over because she had just scraped her elbow on a crate; Louisa and Kurt were climbing over the boxes and telling him to watch them jump.  Georg remained looking at their Fräulein, for once, grinning openly.  Her own bright blue eyes were dancing, pleased to share in his mirth, pleased with herself, perhaps, to be the elemental force behind this joyous chaos all around her.  Mutely, gazing at her with laughing eyes, his hand lifted to pull the straw out of the children's governess' hair.  Her smile was warm; her hair, soft.  His fingers were brushing her temple when the Baroness walked in.

*


	7. Shopping part i

A/N: I tried to research retail/consumer habits for the era, location, and class of the von Trapps, but that proved difficult.  I thought Elsa in particular would be a fan of 'sophisticated' (or yuppy :o) shopping—'modern' department stores, as opposed to a public market.  I ended up probably Americanizing and modernizing the concept, which I find disappointing, but which I hope you all can stand for this chapter and the next—but as always, any criticism is welcome :o)

I'm so glad the Elsa part didn't scare anyone away!  Thank you all so much for the kind feedback; it's inspiring.  Speaking of which, a part in here (oh, guess which :o) was directly inspired by Amy Flo's opinion of a certain puppet.

*

from Chapter 6 

Mutely, gazing at her with laughing eyes, his hand lifted to pull the straw out of the children's governess' hair.  Her smile was warm; her hair, soft.  His fingers were brushing her temple when the Baroness walked in.

_*_

Chapter 7

"My goodness," Elsa announced, appearing in the doorway.  She moved forward beside the Captain, who, startled, was turning away from Maria.  "Georg, what _is _the meaning of this?"

Georg chuckled, offering his arm to Elsa.  "A show, my dear.  And you're invited.  And no, before you ask, you can't get out of it."

"A show?" Elsa replied, startled.

"Brigitta, it appears," he explained confidentially, "plans to be an actress.  Will it do, Bridget?" he asked, raising his voice to his third eldest daughter, who was across the room, looking incredulously at something she was pulling out of a box.  "I didn't think you wanted a puppet show, but I couldn't seem to get much else at this time of year."  He didn't bother to add that the idea of puppetteering had struck him as so particularly amusing, that day their Fräulein had faced him head on, that he'd thought he'd rent the marionettes anyway, just to see if she could possibly make any use of them.

"This girl doesn't have any _pupils_," Brigitta said, disgust in her voice as she looked at the marionette.

"I think she's pretty," Marta said, lifting a hand to the marionette's dress.

"I think she's horrific," Brigitta said stoutly.  She paused thoughtfully, and added, "I quite like her."

Georg began to laugh in earnest, watching as Gretl—wound alleviated by Liesl's kiss—pulled on the beard of one puppet, and as Friedrich scowled at Brigitta's marionette and lifted the dress, encouraging Brigitta, in turn, to kick him in the shins.  "How did you get it, father?" Liesl asked, one of the cross-sections of a goat marionette in her hands as she peered down at it, her expression amused and charmed.

"Oh," the Captain replied airily.  "Take requests like this to Max.  That's why you love him, isn't it?  He's the man who can get things.  He always knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who can get him something, and that's how he gets by at all."

"Oh Georg," Elsa remonstrated, tapping him lightly on the chest.  They were now back in _her _playing field.  The children, their laughter, their jokes, Georg's obvious and pure delight—these she did not know.

"I heard that, Captain von Trapp," Max said, entering the room with a smirk.  "Now you have to admit, Georg, that I _am_ useful.  You can't threaten to turn me out on my backside any more for leeching."

"We were discussing that this morning, darling," Elsa told Max gaily, laughing.  "Georg was simply determined to get rid of you, but I convinced him you had your uses."

"Oh Elsa, my dear, I'm glad I have _some_one looking out for me in this cruel world," Max told her wryly, shaking his head.  "No thanks to Georg."

"It's true.  I believe he said you were—what was it?—a barnacle on his bathtub."  Elsa, laughing, turned her head back to Georg, to share with him her little joking deception.  Georg, however, wasn't paying attention.  He had moved away from her, and was now squatting down to look Marta in the eyes.

"Well, Marta," he was saying jovially.  "It's your turn today, isn't it?  What were you thinking of doing?"  His attention had quickly refastened on his children as she teased Max, and across the room, Elsa's laughter fell silent, her face smoothing over into an accommodating smile.

"I want—" Marta began, but broke off as she realized that most of the other children had stopped what they were doing to gather around her father—and to find out how they would be spending the day.  Marta bent her head to her father's and was silent; she'd always been shy.

"Well, poppet?  What is it?" he asked, his voice gentling, hand on her chin to bring her to look at him.  Marta smiled sweetly and was silent.

Fräulein Maria, heretofore employed in trying to calm the children, smiled down at Marta, coming to stand on the other side of her.  "Come now, Marta," Maria began encouragingly, "what have I said about speaking up?"

Marta smiled reluctantly up at her governess.  "I want to go shopping," she announced, and was promptly quiet again.

Georg raised his brow at Maria.  He could be upset, he supposed, that their Fräulein could get his children to talk when he himself still couldn't, but instead it touched him.  He was glad, somehow, that they loved her.  They trusted her; they had someone to rely on, when he wasn't there—though he had resolved that he would always be there, if they needed him, in the future.  Yes, their Fräulein was good for them—but her methods with them amused him, all the same. "What have you been telling her about speaking up, Fräulein?" he asked archly, straightening, amused suspicion in his eyes as he looked once again into her own.

"To speak up when spoken to, naturally," she replied, sharing with him the lurking gleam in her eyes.  He paused for a moment, merely looking at her, and then began to smile, a slow chuckle building in him at the affected innocence in her reply.

"Well!" Elsa exclaimed suddenly, smiling as she stepped closer to the children.  "Shopping.  At last, one of you picks something I know how to do."

The children were muttering over Marta's request.  Georg hadn't noticed.  Blinking, he turned back to his daughter, and Fräulein Maria turned to settle the children, who talking amongst themselves and building in volume.  "Shopping, Marta?" the Captain asked his daughter.  "Why on earth do you want to go shopping?"

"She wants to be a lady, and she said she should shop for her own dresses.  Haven't you heard her say that before?" Brigitta said, rolling her eyes.

"I'd rather puke," Kurt said, nose wrinkling.

"Don't," Friedrich admonished.

"I'd rather puke on you," Kurt told him, and the children were then all talking at once.

"But you know I need a new dress, Father," Liesl was saying.  For her turn she had wanted to go out to dine—'at a _sophisticated _restaurant, Father.'  He had taken her alone, a simple—very expensive—father/daughter meal, but only after scowling at her dress for a moment and asking whether she didn't have another one.

"I want a pink one, like Liesl," Marta explained.  "One that's twirly."

"I hate pink," Louisa said, crossing her arms over her chest.

"You hate everything," Brigitta told her derisively, and Louisa stuck out her tongue.

"I'm sure I'll know where to look, darling," Elsa was confiding in Marta, bending down to look the girl in the eyes, brushing aside wayward hair from Marta's face.   Marta, in turn, was looking uncertainly at her father.

Georg, startled, looked down at Elsa.  He'd promised her the day, he realized suddenly.  For a moment, it had almost slipped his mind.  The finer feelings she awakened in him—a wry amusement, a delicate serenity, an admiration for beauty, elegance, wit—genuine hilarity had made him forget.  Even his desire had been somewhat quelled—children, for better or for worse, could have a habit of doing that.  It had been such a long time since he had laughed aloud.  

He stood for a moment, considering Elsa—who had, on one lonely Viennese night, when lords and ladies were laughing and he was drinking darkly in a corner, made him laugh, made him want and ache all at once, made him even love again.  Georg made a snap decision.  "It may not be possible, Marta," he told his daughter seriously, smiling gently.  "I've promised the day to the Baroness, you see, and I'm not sure she wants to spend it shopping."

"Georg, for shame!" Elsa exclaimed, apparently delighted.  "Look at her face; she's crushed.  We must do what she's asked for now, Georg; you've got yourself in too deep.

"Why Elsa, my dear," Georg replied, with a small, close-lipped smile, "you would have me spoil her."

"Unmercifully," Elsa agreed, apparently certain of her own course.  "What do you say, lovely?" she asked, turning back to Marta.  "Would you like me to help you find a twirly pink dress?"

Marta blinked at her for a moment, and then looked up at her father.  "I want Fräulein Maria to come," she said simply.  

Elsa laughed half-heartedly and stood straight, while Georg chuckled softly, shaking his head.  He went to take the Baroness' arm.  "I'm not sure your Fräulein would want to come, Marta," Georg told her.  "She seems to be a better swimmer than a shopper."  He swallowed a smile and glanced at Maria.

Maria shrugged at him, smiling, and looked ruefully to Marta.  "I really know nothing of it, Marta.  The Baroness could surely find you something lovely.  Wouldn't you like that, darling?"

At Marta's crestfallen look, Elsa laughed.  "There's no way out of it, Maria; you _must _come along," she said,  dropping Georg's arm and moving closer to Maria.  The children were beginning to chat again—probably discussing the merits of pink and shopping, Georg thought, as he listened to Elsa make overtures to the governess.  "They quite adore you, you know," she was saying confidentially, "and I don't blame them.  I do believe I frighten them."

"Oh, I don't think they do," Maria replied hastily, and Georg wondered if he had just heard the Fräulein tell her first half-truth.  "Besides, the children do so want to get better acquainted with you, and I really don't know the first thing about—"

"All the more reason to take you," Elsa insisted.  "And my dear, you need an evening dress.  You are quite a talented seamstress, but there's a certain wonder to store-bought clothes.  You wouldn't know unless you've tried them."  

Georg listened with raised brows—to a conversation he normally would not have found the least bit interesting—but Elsa, giving a _governess_ fashion advice. . . well, it was simply something he'd never thought he'd hear.  Amused—but a trifle impatient—he at last broke up the murmurs of his children and the adults with a stern, decisive voice.  "It's settled, then.  Fräulein, you will join Marta, the Baroness and I, and we will go buy you your dress, Marta—you too, Liesl," he added, seeing a protest building in her face.  "Max?  You weren't doing anything today, were you?"

"I—" Max began, brows lifted.

"Good," Georg interrupted him.  "You can see to all this mess, and help the children set up the rest of their stage."  Max, looking abruptly disgruntled, managed half a scowl, half a grin.  "Frau Schmidt will tend the children," Georg told him wryly, laughing, "and Friedrich, you're to tend Max—he needs all the help he can get.  You should change, Fräulein," Georg went on frankly, surveying Maria, "if you're coming.  You too, Liesl.  And you, poppet," the said, grinning down at Marta, "will ride in the front seat of the car, if you like."

*

"Which, then?" the Captain was asking his daughter, as he leant over Marta to look in the case in the jewelry store with her.  A couturier Elsa knew by reputation had already been paid his visit.  Measurements had been taken; orders had been made, all handled by Elsa's deft hands and maneuverings, Liesl's curious inspection, and Marta's pleas for a truly ridiculous pink contraption that her father wouldn't buy her.  Fräulein Maria had watched the conversations between Elsa and the couturier with the fascination with which a man who is tone deaf listens to opera, and Georg had regarded the goings on with an amused, indulgent look.  

Elsa, though satisfied, had then suggested that they inspect a department store or two as well, and Liesl had heartily agreed.  They were in the store one over, going on about their business.  Marta, however, was exhausted, and Maria—not very interested in the shopping anyway—stayed with her little charge.  The Captain, having very little to do in a woman's dress shop, opted to take the remaining ladies to the jeweler's—with a cock of his head and a hint that Marta might see something she liked. 

"This one, Father," Marta replied.  Marta was pointing into the jewelry case, and Georg bent again to get a closer look, and suddenly laughed aloud, startling his daughter.

"Don't you think it's a bit—excessive, Marta?"

She looked at him questioningly.  She was pointing at a huge tiara, studded with at least thirteen diamonds.  Maria, standing a bit away, was stifling her own laughter.  "You don't like it, Father?" Marta asked, disappointed.

Georg looked skeptically down at his daughter.  "Isn't there anything else in here you like a little better?  Perhaps something a little—smaller?"

"Well . . . "  Marta said thoughtfully, biting her lip.  "There are these."  She pointed at a pair of heavy earrings with golden clasps.

Georg sighed.  "How about a nice locket, instead?"  

"But—"

"No," the Captain told her, straightening in order to look down at her with a familiar, stern expression.  "No, absolutely not.  You will not be allowed to go sticking baubles on or in your ears, thank you Marta."  His daughter looked crestfallen—his children, particularly this one, could be so easily affected merely by his tone.  He glanced up at Fräulein Maria, who shrugged at him as if to say: 'she's all yours, Captain.' Georg gave the governess a dry smile and looked down at Marta.  "At least, not until you're older, poppet," he said more gently.

"How _much _older?"

"We'll have to see.  Why don't you keep looking?  Maybe after a couple hours you'll pick out something very little I might actually consider buying for you."

Marta then proceeded to pick out one expensive, gaudy, useless piece of jewelry after another, causing her father to continue laughing and shaking his head at her, a genuine smile of adoration creeping across his face when she was looking into the case and he was left looking down at her bent head.  Marta herself was enjoying it, no matter how much he denied her.  She wasn't used to be singled out; Gretl, being the youngest, often—even without trying—called attention to herself.  Georg remembered the times when Marta was still the youngest, always a quiet baby, and Agathe still alive, holding the small, dark-headed infant in her arms.  "What about that ring?" she asked, smiling up at her father.  "It's not so very big."

Georg stood looking down at her for a moment, his expression lost in his suddenly somber thoughts.  He blinked and smiled at her, and with an abruptly affectionate gesture, he picked her up in the middle of the department store—not very usual behavior for a man not given to public displays of affection.  "You have tastes like your mother," he told his daughter, still smiling.  Marta turned her head to look at him, a wondering smile on her face, and Georg could feel Fräulein Maria looking at him curiously.  As well they should be surprised.  He almost never spoke of Agathe.

He never let himself think of her.  Years before the sorrow had still been too poignant—but now it was different.  Now, looking at Marta's pleased smile and thinking of Agathe, his thoughts wandered toward the Baroness.  He was glad Elsa hadn't minded spending the day once again with his children, but he was suddenly impatient.  Inexplicably, he wanted Elsa here beside him with his daughter.  He wanted to remember the feel of her lips and his hand in her hair, and forget this odd feeling of an absence.  And yet, Agathe had been gone a long time; he had accepted it—why was he suddenly feeling this strange emptiness?

"Does that mean you'll get it for me, Papa?" Marta asked, breaking into his thoughts, asking him more out of habit than true desire.

"I don't know, poppet," he answered, not really thinking about his reply.  "I don't know."  Georg looked down at her as she settled her head on his shoulder.  She was a bittersweet, beautiful weight in his arms, and in that moment, he felt as if he loved her so much he couldn't express it—couldn't stand it, even.  "It's been a long time since you called me 'Papa,'" he said at last, his voice almost disappearing into her hair, his small smile lost against her head.  Marta yawned and turned her head to the other side.

Fräulein Maria was laughing.  "Marta, it's almost time to go home," she told her little charge softly, stepping up beside Georg to rub circles onto Marta's back.  Maria glanced up.  "She worn out, Captain," she told him, laughing gently.

"Yes," he said, eyes still on his little daughter.  Maria's hand was soothing her, relaxing her until she was heavier in his arms.  Marta's toddler years were far behind her, but she could still fall asleep as quickly as the best of them—and weigh more than twice as much while doing so.  He would need to put her down soon.  Smiling, he looked up at the children's Fräulein, meeting her eyes.  It was surprising how right this felt—the weight of his own flesh and blood in his arms, beginning to breathe heavily, and her little Fräulein governess, simple and sure, knowing exactly what to do for his daughter, her own eyes clear, bright, and laughing.  It felt, in the strangest way, like a family, and the emptiness was gone.

He already took  their governess for granted, he realized suddenly.  He'd accepted her, and so assumed she'd be there, doing the things she did that, like this, made the strange and somewhat painful process of coming to know his children again that much easier.  She was truly—among other things, he thought, smiling inwardly—a gift from God.  "Thank you, Fräulein," he found himself saying suddenly, gently, over Marta's head.

"I don't know," she replied skeptically, raising her brows and mistaking his meaning.  "You're the one who's carrying her, if I make her fall asleep like this."

"I'm not asleep," Marta protested, yawning, and Georg and Maria smiled.

*


	8. Shopping part ii

A/N: As always, if you have any criticism or advice, don't hesitate to give it (especially on the Capt in this chapter.  I think Georg's behavior in at least one part of this chapter is questionable—and perhaps not in character.  It's bothering me, but I don't know how to deal with it).   Ingrid, I definitely like the suggestion of more one-on-one days with Georg and his children—in this fic or some other, I'm not sure. imnotacommittee, I'm so glad you noticed the 'their little Fräulein' business.  I'm afraid you haven't seen the last of it yet, though.  

Thank you for the loveRly reviews—some of the later chapters are getting hard to write and it's nice to know they're wanted. 

(and that people actually _like _the 'brick-by-brick' method!—which I still fear is boring.  Thanks, Jelpy :o)  

*

_from_ Chapter 7

"_Thank_ _you_, _Fräulein_," he _found himself saying suddenly, gently,_ _over_ _Marta's_ _head_.

"_I_ _don't_ _know_," _she_ _replied_ _skeptically, raising her brows and mistaking_ _his_ _meaning_.  "_You're_ _the_ _one_ _who's_ _carrying her, if I make her fall asleep_ _like_ _this_."

"_I'm_ _not_ _asleep_," _Marta_ _protested, yawning, and Georg_ _and_ _Maria_ _smiled_.

*

Chapter 8

Georg's eyes were still on Fräulein Maria—though she had looked down to Marta, smiling teasingly at her—when a saleswoman commandeered their attention.  "Captain von Trapp?  Fräulein Maria?—Excuse me," she fluted, making a little half-step.  

"Yes?" he asked, brow lifting.

"The Baroness Schraeder and Fräulein von Trapp have directed me to escort Fräulein Maria next door.  Your assistance is required, they say," she added, nodding at Fräulein Maria.

"_My _assistance?" Fräulein Maria queried, surprised.  She glanced back at Georg and Marta questioningly.

Georg chuckled.  "Don't worry.  We'll still be here, Fräulein."

"Where is Fräulein Maria going?" Marta asked, frowning.  "I want to go too."

"What's this?  A traitor in the ranks?" Georg retorted, smothering a smile and jiggling her in his arms.  "What, you don't want to stay here with your old dad?"

"Only for a little while, Marta," Maria was saying, half laughing.  "And you said you were tired of looking at dresses and fabric."

"I want to go with Fräulein Maria," Marta replied stoutly, and Georg sighed and put her down.

"Go on, then," he told her, mock sternly.  "Go with your Fräulein."  The Captain watched her governess take his daughter's hand and follow the saleswoman across the slick, marble-tiled floor out of the door.  Just like Louisa, he was thinking.  She had always wanted to do everything with her mother.  

Georg started.  Not 'just like Louisa.'  The Fräulein, after all, was just the governess.  A peculiar one, he'd admit—as the children had hated all the others.

Not just a governess, then, Georg conceded.  More like . . . a member of the family, strange as it was.  Yes, that was it, Georg decided, recalling that odd feeling of rightness—moments before, when she had stood beside him, his child in his arms—that he hadn't been able to explain.  It was why he was already beginning to take her for granted, he supposed, why he'd taken to assuming she'd always be there.  The way she interacted with them was similar to the actions of an old friend, an aunt, a sister.  

Georg smiled.  Fräulein Maria was already getting dragged around by Elsa or Liesl or both to go shopping, like Max.  Except Max enjoyed spending other people's money, and Georg was certain the thought had never entered the little Fräulein's pretty head.  She had relinquished her ground gracefully—and rather assiduously, Georg had noted—over to Elsa at the couturier's, remaining silent and composed in the background—unusual behavior, for anyone who knew Fräulein Maria.

'I never pictured you for a wallflower, Fräulein,' Georg had told her jokingly, when Marta had at last been somewhat appeased and finally looked as worn out and sickened by the whole business as her governess. 

'Oh, I don't mind it,' Maria had assured him, smiling whole-heartedly.  'The Baroness certainly knows what she's doing.'

'Don't you find this entertaining, though?' he'd asked, laughing.  She'd looked more numb than after a day spent swimming and climbing trees. 

Maria had looked at him thoughtfully and shrugged.  'Nice clothes were only ever good for looking at and getting dirty, when I was a child."

"Ah," Georg had replied.  "You prefer—play clothes?"

Maria had laughed.  "Well, yes.  And a habit, I suppose, if I ever make it to that."  She'd grinned again at the Captain's raised brow.  "I am very plain, sir.  I don't suppose you'll ever see me in any other sort of uniform.'

'Or straight-jacket, Fräulein?' he'd queried, teasing, referring to her label of the children's uniforms.  But his question wasn't all facetious.  Whenever she chanced to remind him of it, it always surprised him to recall that Maria was still a postulant.  She seemed far too vivacious and affectionate to lock herself into a life of such quiet devotion, such regulated love for a singular being.

Maria had looked half agitated in response, remembering their argument of some time ago.  'I _did _ask your forgiveness for that sir; I do apologize.'  She had been so flustered.  Georg smiled in remembrance.

Deuce take it, where _were_ they?  As much as he loved his daughters, the next time one of them suggested doing something like this he was going to pack them off for the day with Elsa or their Fräulein and wish them good riddance.  He detested standing around, and that was precisely what he was supposed to do when he took a lady shopping—stand patiently while she dithered around with the sales clerks and tailors.  The Captain shook his head minutely and strode out of the jeweler's, his expression haughty—not the least because he had just realized that he was smiling to himself as he stood alone in the middle of a public store.

*

"Can I help you?" a clerk asked him in the clothing department store, advancing politely.

"Yes.  Is the Baroness Schraeder—"

"Father!" Liesl was entering the foyer to the store—perhaps looking for one of the saleswomen, when she caught sight of him.

"Liesl—no," he Georg admonished, walking over toward her.

"What—"

"I said no and I meant no," he told her sternly, taking her by the elbow and pushing on the door out of which she had come.  She was wearing the most horrific dress he had ever seen.  It was low in all the wrong places and tight in all the bad ones, and the material was so flimsy that wouldn't have mattered anyway.  Suddenly he was glad he had 'stood around' so long at the couturier's, so he'd know exactly what his children would be wearing.

"I was just trying it on, Father," Liesl protested, but followed him willingly back into the lobby area of the women's department.

"Were you?" Georg questioned, his tone sardonic.

"Well, yes.  I am sixteen, aren't I?  May I—"

"_No,_" he said, with the firm authority that meant if she spoke another word about it, there would be further consequences.  His answer decisive and the issue closed, Georg glanced around the lobby.  It was only occupied by Marta, who was asleep on the divan, and Elsa, who regarded them both with amused curiosity, Fräulein Maria, who kept her silence.  It was this that gave Georg pause.  "Fräulein Maria," he said suddenly, staying Liesl from the dressing room with a hand.  "What is your opinion?"

Maria did not need to ask him what he was referring to.  She merely tilted her head and looked at him with her open, honest eyes.  "I think that you're her father, and that there are certain things you have a say to."  She raised her brows then, with that way she had of looking at him that meant she was going to challenge him, and do so in all innocence.  "I also think Liesl is sixteen and probably could make the decision of what to _wear _by herself."

Georg's brows shot toward his hairline; Liesl was lifting her chin and grinning surreptitiously at her governess.  Elsa was looking from one to the other in partial alarm.  "And what do you think of this dress, Fräulein?"  He gestured with exaggerated ceremony at Liesl's revealing frock.  "You, who we can trust to give your honest opinion?"

Maria looked over at Liesl and hid a smile.  "Liesl, I don't think it suits you."

"Really?" Liesl asked her, her face falling.

"Well, I should talk.  It's not as bad as that dress I wore when I first came to your villa, is it?" Maria replied, grinning, and walking over to put her arm around Liesl.  "But what little I do know of it is this: less isn't always better, Liesl, sometimes it's just less.  And there are advantages to being sixteen—and it's not necessarily that you can suddenly start to try to look older . . ."  

"I suppose I can wait a while for it," Liesl said, glancing with a scowl at her father, but with a look back to Maria that was all attentiveness.

Maria, smiling, was steering Liesl toward the dressing room.  "The point is—the wonderful thing is," she went on, "that at sixteen you can still look young, and _are_ young, dear, and can wear those beautiful, flowing dresses the girls do without looking like you're trying to be someone you're not . . ."  Elsa was watching Maria persuade the child with an admiration that bordered on envy;  Georg observed the governess's skillful manipulation of his daughter with something akin to wonder.

Liesl was smiling along with her governess—a touch wistfully, but smiling nevertheless.  "You're saying I should take advantage of looking young while I can?"

Maria was laughing, still guiding Liesl toward the changing rooms.  "Exactly.  And perhaps by the time you can't, even your father will have come around."  She bent her head closed to Liesl's, and Liesl, laughing at something her governess whispered in her ear, opened the door to the adjoining selection area.

Maria patted her shoulder and closed the door, turning back to the room behind her.  "Fräulein—" Georg began, and shook his head, his eyes locked on Maria's.  He waited until Liesl would have gone down the hall and all the way into the dressing room, still not sure whether to be displeased or not.  Five minutes ago, Liesl had looked as if she was ready to throw a fight for that dress, or if not, to be upset by her own dutiful acceptance to her father.  Then Fräulein Maria had taken her arm and convinced her that not only shouldn't she speak against her father, but that Liesl herself didn't even like the dress overly much to begin with.  Georg wasn't sure whether to be grateful for or alarmed at Maria's influence over his children.  "I never pictured you much for manipulation," he said finally, his tone measured.

Maria pursed her lips and shook her head.  "Because I'm not.  I only told her the truth."  She looked at him, tilting her head minutely.  "Sometimes that and gentleness, Captain, work better than anger."  She did not quite say it pointedly; her voice was soft—but there was a firm nudge in the remark, nevertheless.

"You _do _have such a way with children, though," Elsa told her softly, from the other side of the room.

"But Liesl isn't a child," Maria objected, shaking her head again.  "I remember when I was that age," she went on, and broke into a smile.  "I was such a trial to everyone, telling them I'd already grown up—and now here I am, wishing I never had at all."  She said this with a hearty laugh at herself in her eyes and voice, opening her hands at her sides as if to say: 'see?  I can't help myself.'  

Georg's eyes were still focused on her, that same, steady gaze, as if to measure her up.  Perhaps he was trying to reconcile this little figure before him with the one who had so easily handled his own daughter when he could not.  She didn't _look _as if she had that kind of strength and wisdom in her.  She was wearing this little swath of a blue thing—as sheer and delicate as perhaps Liesl's horror had been, but cut in such a way that it was no horror—only simple.  Both of the women had been trying on clothes; apparently, Elsa had summoned Maria in order to finally get her to try something on.  Beautiful, really—the dress was.  He had never seen that color on her before.  She should wear it more often—except that governesses didn't wear things like that, shouldn't wear things like that.  "You look very pretty, Fräulein," he said abruptly.  

Maria immediately looked down at his words.  Blinking, Georg looked around, abruptly teasing and speaking jovially, as if to alleviate the sudden lull his compliment had produced.  "And you, my dear, look ravishing," he told Elsa, who laughed as his hand found her waist.  

"Really, Georg," she replied, pushing him away.  

"Really, darling," he imitated.  "It's a very striking dress.  Worse than Liesl's, and very striking."

"Georg!"

"You're allowed; you're not my daughter," Georg said, smiling mischievously as his hand grazed her cheek.  She really did look very lovely, he was noticing.  He was distracted, and yet—he had kissed her this morning; he had wanted her.  "Didn't I say it looked ravishing?"

"This old thing?" Elsa said, laughing again and half twirling under his frankly flirtatious scrutiny.  "I've had it for years."  

"And this 'old thing'?  What do you call this?" he murmured, his hand again brushing her waist.

"A _sash, _darling, and stop it," Elsa told him, still laughing.  She was genuinely delighted, smiling under his eyes, until she saw movement over his shoulder.  "Come now, Georg; spoil someone else.  Doesn't Maria look lovely?  I found several pieces I just _knew _would be perfect for her.  I have impeccable taste, don't I?"

"Yes—" Georg began, hesitating, as he turned back around to study Maria.

She had been about to return to the dressing rooms, to ask Liesl if she needed any help, but here she paused, face flushed, unsmiling.  "Thank you Baroness, Captain," she said, nodding to each.  "I really must—"

"Fräulein," Georg began, more to stay her than to say anything in particular.  He paused for a moment, looking at her, and then waved his hand indifferently.  "Whoever said that you were plain—they were wrong," he told her, his voice easy, paying the joking compliment the Baroness's observations had in fact necessitated, if he was to be polite.  Smiling, he looked around for Elsa, who came up beside him to link her arm through his.  

"Plain?  Who could say that about you, my dear?" Elsa asked Maria, with affected indignation. 

Maria looked at her and shrugged, smiling wryly.  "Myself," she said simply, and made as if to go.

"You must buy this dress for her, Georg," Elsa announced decisively, staying her.  "You must buy it and the other ones I found for her."

Maria was beginning to protest, but Georg began to chuckle, looking at Elsa with a smile.  "Oh, must I?  And you'll want me to buy this get-up for you as well?"

"Oh Georg, don't be such a boor," she told him, swatting him on the arm.  "I won't have you buy me a single thing.  But you must buy Maria's dress, and the others I found for her, and the one I found for Marta—and every other dress Liesl wants, since you were so mean to her about that other one."

"Please," Maria interrupted.  "You've supplied me with enough fabric.  You've been more than generous, Captain—"

"But you need more of an evening dress, Maria, and the others looked so pretty on you," Elsa assured her.

"Elsa tells me you need evening dresses," Georg replied, shrugging.  "There's nothing I can do about it."

"But I don't want to be any trouble to—"

"Oh no, no trouble," the Captain said dismissively, waving her aside and looking around the lobby.  He found one of the sales clerks and waved her down.  "Put whatever she says to my account, Fräulein," Georg told the saleswoman, gesturing laconically back at Elsa.  "But not," he added, turning back to Baroness, "anything Liesl wants.  She's getting just one dress, and I have to see it beforehand."  Elsa laughed at him and went off with the clerk, beginning already to place orders.  Maria, however, grabbed Georg's arm to stop him from turning back to go find Liesl.

"Honestly, Captain, I—"

"Honestly Fräulein," he repeated softly, gently removing her hand from his coat and placing it in his own for a moment.  The Captain stood looking at her, his gaze suddenly intense and sincere, the sardonic teasing no longer on display.  "Honestly, Fräulein," he said again, looking down at her.  "It's the least I can do."  Then he squeezed her hand and walked the other way in his strident, measured step.

*  
  



	9. Lesson

A/N: Sorry for the repost.  I changed my mind and agree with you, imnotacommittee, that Maria would have been taught Latin.  This is closer to what I originally had.

A/N: Sorry for the wait on this.  Much thanks to those who nagged me for it; that's why I'm posting it :o)  I'm having a bit of trouble on the next chapter, so if you do or don't like this chapter, please tell me, because they kinda connect.  I'd love to hear anything anyone as to say.

A small note: I have no idea as regards the Captain's or these children's education.  I know that back in the day all kids were supposed to learn Latin, but I don't know for certain when and where that was.  Anywho, I'd already written it in there by the time I started reconsidering, so 'alea iacta est'.  Don't worry, there's no actual Latin in this. :o) 

*

Chapter 9

The news hadn't seemed to be good for a long time.  Very few were worried.  National Socialists were overjoyed, actually, and young men who didn't know any better could sense the stirring of some kind of adventure better than most of the uninformed.  Many were accepting.  'What's going to happen's going to happen,' Max had said—and it had been the greatest form of slander because it was the tenant of so many.  The rest didn't know what was happening and didn't care.  There seemed to be so few who knew what was about to happen and wanted to do something to stop it.

Georg resisted the impulse to slam his fist into the radio.  His jaw set in a hard line, he flipped the switch to off and moved to look out the window, out where it was bright and green and the sun shone carefree, where the movement of armies and the rise of a mad man in the Rhineland seemed impossible, or not to matter.  _Gone, _a voice was saying in his head.  _This will all be gone, and the sun will rise no more.  _What made him even more angry was that the sun would go on, rising and setting, even if his whole world collapsed.  He'd rather it didn't.  Again, looking out those pristine panes, he mastered the impulse to break something.  Swallowing a sigh, he lifted the latch on the window and breathed in the morning air.

It was one of those mornings.  One of those mornings when you got up and wished that someone was lying beside you, one when you opened your window and sucked in air that had a bite of something to come, you felt the restless sense of something missing.  Georg von Trapp had been feeling it often, lately, since he'd returned to Salzburg, but the threatening dreariness on the radio, this unbearably fresh morning, defined the feeling in his head, made him acutely realize it was there.

It was on mornings such as these, when it was too beautiful to truly countenance the gloomy goings-on of man, that he thought of Agathe—it was the only time he wasn't able to stop himself.  She had been beautiful—a sweep of honey-yellow hair, gray eyes, the fragile white skin of a woman lovely by her very nature.  She had been refined, elegant—the perfect wife of a baron, a captain, and an important personage, but underneath she had had a sort of hidden joy, a sense of mischief—a wealth of passion, that sometimes the Captain feared Elsa lacked—and most of the time, _knew _Elsa lacked.  It was the want of those rare glimpses of the girl in Agathe that had depressed him the most, after her loss, and it was on mornings such as these, when he needed them most, that he remembered.  

He had left off wanting her back, because he knew it was impossible.  He did not _let _himself want her back.  That did not mean he wanted nothing, though.  Georg shook his head.  None of it bore thinking about.

Restless, he left his bedroom and moved down the hall.  Stopping as he had before outside the school room door, Georg watched his children once again.  He liked watching them unobserved—liked seeing them unself-conscious, Friedrich paying the goofy, uncalculated attention he did to his siblings when he wasn't trying to be their protector, teacher, or simply a man older than he really was, Gretl placid and quiet, working on her reading with her tongue between her teeth.  They filled him with a sense of pride—these children were _his, _of his own blood, and they loved him.  

Perhaps he had a secret sense that told him that when everything that belonged to him was stripped from him, these children would still be his.  Or perhaps he thought that in possessing what he loved most and wanted, he needed nothing else, no matter what would come.  Either way, his children belonged to him in a way that was paradoxically mutual: he was their father; by law, he owned rights to them.  But they, in turn, were his salvation, and they were _his_ all the more because he was also _theirs_.   He knew that it was not so very far-fetched to believe that one day he might have to give up his life for theirs—and this, he already knew, he would do.

Georg strode in the room, and sat next to Kurt, who was making paper airplanes instead of working his figures as he ought.  Brigitta and Marta were reading; Liesl was working on writing something and helping Gretl at the same time; Louisa was frowning down at a blank sheet of paper.  "Father?" Friedrich asked, looking up and hastily covering up the doodles scrawled down the sides of his papers.

"Where is your Fräulein?" Georg asked, glancing around the room.

"Oh.  She went out."  Kurt was hastily turning back to his work, but Friedrich was tapping his pencil nervously and several of the others were looking at him with some measure of curiosity, alarm, and wonder.  He did not often come into the school room.  In the days before Fräulein Maria, it had usually only been to call one or the other of them out on something he had discovered they had done.

"Don't let me disturb you," he told them, waving a hand.  "Go on.  Work."  The hesitantly turned back to their papers and books, and Georg watched them for a while.  Presently, he began to drum his hands on the desk.  "Do you know where she is?"

"No, she didn't say," Brigitta said, closing her book.  "She had that 'I have an idea' look on her face, you know, Father?  We never know where she goes when she looks like that."

"Oh?" Georg replied, brow lifting.  He remained looking critically at Brigitta, who, under his stare, looked to one side, then the other, and began reading her book again.  "And do you know when she'll be back?"

"Is she in trouble, Father?" Louisa asked, frowning.

Georg looked at her sharply.  "No, Louisa, she's not in trouble."  He raised a brow, lips pursing.  "I hardly see how that's any of _your _concern, though."  The children silently went back to their reading, writing, and figuring, and Georg waited.  What, exactly, he was waiting for, he couldn't say.  He had come to see the children, not their governess.  Why did they always seem to think he would be angry at her?  Did _she _think of him that way?  There was a certain thread of tension in the room now, and Georg found himself frowning.  So much for finding peace in the happiness of the children.  They thought he was going to maul their governess, for God's sake.

In that moment, Fräulein Maria pushed open the door and began in a bright voice, "Well, children, I can't—oh," she finished suddenly, her voice dropping off as she took in the sight of the Captain.

Georg slowly stood.  "Good morning, Fräulein Maria," he murmured.

"Er—good morning, sir," she replied, nodding.

"Please continue," Georg said, much as he had to the children.  He waved his hand, feeling no more explanation for his presence really necessary.  "Go on with what you were about to say."

"Oh.  Well, er . . . that is—"

"Fräulein?" he asked, tilting his head with a bit of surprise.  She seemed flustered to see him there.  In a way, it pleased him: she was so . . . amusing, when at a loss—but he found the idea that he could possibly intimidate her distasteful.  She may be the children's governess, but he had a great deal of respect for her.  He didn't want her—or his children—thinking that he considered her an inferior, or thought of her as less than she really was.  In fact, because of his children and the gratitude he felt toward her, he wanted her to . . . well, _like _him, if that was the word.  Georg smiled at her.  "I assure you this is not a review.  I wouldn't know where to begin to judge your progress."

"Oh, it's not that, sir," she assured him, and Georg nodded.  "The truth is I was just . . . well, I was looking for you, Captain."

"For me?" Georg queried, surprise evident in his voice.

"Louisa's translating," Maria was explaining, gesturing.  "And to tell you the truth, I never made good marks in Latin.  I think it must go completely over my head.  But Louisa says she's to begin it in school this September,--a very classical curriculum, it seems," Maria interrupted herself, laughing a little, "and I thought perhaps she could get a head start—except that it's quite complicated, you know, and I thought that maybe you—could—or—I don't know—I'm not sure if you—"

"Latin, Louisa?" Georg questioned, turning towards his second eldest daughter.

Louisa scowled and Fräulein Maria supplied: "Hm.  Yes, Captain.  She was having trouble with some conjugations."

Georg was silent for a moment.  "Louisa, why didn't you just ask me in the first place?"

"You know Latin, Father?" Brigitta asked, at the same time as Marta piped: "Is _Father_ going to help Louisa do _school_ work?"

Georg locked his hands behind his back, brows lifting as he surveyed the people in the room.  "I seemed to have hired a governess," he said, "who lacks the proper qualifications.  The next time you have questions, Louisa," he went on, gently, strolling toward Louisa and placing a hand on her shoulder, "don't hesitate to ask me."

Louisa looked up at him stonily, and said only: "Fräulein Maria is a good governess."

Georg chuckled and turned to catch Maria's eye.  "Is she, indeed?" he asked the governess, his wry half-smile only in his eyes.

"Why—" Fräulein Maria met his eyes and shrugged, smiling at him.  "Why yes.  I suppose so, sir."

Georg laughed.  There it was, indirect, but he was reassured just the same.  As always, she met him as an equal, and even felt comfortable enough around him to tease him, in her challenging, forthright way.  He shouldn't have doubted how she felt—but Fräulein Maria was different than other women.  She was active, strong, and honest, where others could be apathetic, weak, and manipulative, but there was a certain naiveté, a certain innocence to her, that made him want to reassure himself.  Georg broke his gaze and looked down at Louisa.  "Show me," he commanded, gesturing.

Louisa, with somewhat grudging obedience, showed him the passage she was attempting to translate, and he sat down next to her, speaking gently and with an intimacy he knew he and Louisa generally lacked.  She was the most closed-off of his children, the one most unwilling to speak to him even when he had begun to take more notice of her—of all the children.  

She had been the one hit hardest when Agathe had died.  He'd always been close to Liesl, if not before the death of her mother, then after, because he had used her—the most mature among them—as a means of speaking to the rest of his children.  Brigitta had always been a favorite; the boys had merely had a connection to him due to gender; the little ones hadn't known their mother and though it was difficult for them, they were never depressed by memories.  Louisa, however, had been a needy little girl, and, remembering her beautiful, laughing mother, was a moody teen.

Gradually he could tell she became more comfortable sitting there next to him, because she finally began to express her frustration on the verbs.  "There are just so _many," _she complained angrily, sitting back in her chair and flinging her pencil aside.

Georg hid a smile.  "Temper, Lady Lou."

She looked at him, startled.  "I hate that name."

"You didn't used to," he told her, shrugging, and brushed her hair away from her temple.  After a moment—looking at her while she looked stonily away, he sighed and said: "You look like your mother when you get into a rage."

"I'm not in a rage," she said petulantly, crossing her arms over her chest.  And then, suddenly, wonderingly: "I do?"

"Yes," he told her simply, his knuckle brushing her cheek.  She did so look like Agathe—right down to the sprinkling of innocent freckles across the bridge of her nose—so much so that he looked away and remembered why, for so long, he had been trying to shut his children out.  Eyes glazed, staring across the room, Georg watched Fräulein Maria helping Marta with some recitations, continually interrupted by Gretl, who kept coming over to ask her Fräulein to how to pronounce one word or another.  Maria, looking harried, wasn't really making progress with either child, but both Marta and Gretl didn't seem to mind, and the look on their Fräulein's face whenever Gretl interrupted her once again was priceless.

"She didn't like Latin either, your mother," Georg told Louisa at last.  He remembered the times he had been reading and Agathe had entered his library, picking his book up out of his hands and leafing through it.  A short time later she would chuck it, announcing 'dear, it's all Greek to me.  I prefer French, darling'—and then her lips would be on his, and literature and translations had become another world, as far away as the sea.  Almost all his memories of Agathe ended in that way, which was perhaps what made it so painful—she had been so very loving.  

And yet now, watching little Gretl return continually to interrupt Marta and her Fräulein, he could laugh at it.  Somehow, the memory was dimmed—or lightened.  Now it seemed to bring only the happiness it should, without that aching sense of loss he loathed.  Chuckling, Georg turned back to his elder daughter.  "Perhaps females shouldn't burden themselves with such heavy material," he suggested.

Louisa's scowl deepened.  "Women can learn things just as well as a man," she announced.

Georg sat back, taking her pencil, regarding her sardonically.  "You're opinionated like your mother was, too."

Louisa blinked.  She thought for a moment and frowned.  "You were teasing me," she said finally, slowly.

Her father tapped the pencil on his thigh, gazing at her, as if measuring her up.  "Yes," he said at last, inclining his head.  "I was, Lady Lou."

Louisa glowered and grabbed her pencil, and went back to her translations with renewed vigor, careful not to look at him.  But from the way she bent her head, the way she let her hair fall back across her temple, he could tell his daughter was smiling.

Georg worked a little while longer with Louisa, making sure she understood the answers to her questions properly.  He liked this feeling of being able to help his children—why had he never done this before?  At last he stood, heavy hand falling to Louisa's shoulder.  "Have you got it now?" he asked her.

"Yes, I think so," she replied.  She turned back to her paper, and suddenly paused.  "Thank you," she said quietly, and went back to her work.

Laughing silently to himself, Georg walked over to the couch, and grabbed Gretl's little hand before she could interrupt her governess once again.  "I think it's time you left off grilling your Fräulein, Gretl."

"Oh, really, Captain, we've got it under control," Fräulein Maria assured him—but she looked relieved.

Gretl was looking up at him, startled.  "But Fräulein Maria knows all the words in this book," she complained, plaintive.

"Well, perhaps I can help you," Georg told her, a half-smile saved for his glance at Maria, who was mouthing silent thanks.  Georg chuckled, wondering how long it had taken the governess to get his children to this point—where most of them, at least, studied quietly, and didn't leave snakes in her desk

Gretl looked doubtful.  "But Fräulein Maria—" she began.

Georg shook his head and rolled his eyes.  "We'll just sit right here," he told Gretl, sitting down on settee, next to Maria, who had Marta on her other side.  "If I don't know a word," he continued, with an exasperation that was more amused than anything else, "we can ask your Fräulein."  Gretl, seemingly content, settled down into his lap as he opened the book—an anthology of old Austrian folktales.  Georg looked down at the text and his daughter, suddenly feigning indignation.  "And when," he asked archly, "did your Fräulein get smarter than your papa?"

Gretl shrugged and looked up at him innocently.  "Fräulein Maria knows everything, Father," she told him simply, and began to inspect the picture that began the next story.

Chuckling, Georg looked over at Maria, already engrossed in helping Marta with her work.  He wanted to ask her if she knew that—that she knew everything—wanted her to look at him with disingenuous challenge in her face, or to look down, blushing, and laugh.  But her pretty, golden head was bent down close to Marta's, her light, musical voice was directed elsewhere—the length of her thigh, in her hideous, convent dress, was touching his, because this couch was too damn small.  "Once upon a time," Georg began immediately, not quite reading off the page.  "There was a little girl," he went on, and began, in earnest, to read to the child in his arms.

Gretl was a treasure and he knew it.  She was small, bright, beautiful—and she always laughed at his jokes, when she understood that he was making them.  It had always amused him about Elsa, too—she laughed at his jokes.  Gretl was laughing now at the story, the voices he was making for the heroine, the croaking witch voice for the antagonist.  This was yet another thing that he was finding he missed—long ago, he'd read to his children.  He could tell Brigitta remembered—she was stopping what she was doing, looking up and listening with half an ear.

Lesson time was drawing toward a close.  The older children were going about their own business, but Kurt was motionless, pretending not to listen, and Fräulein Maria and Marta had stopped their work several minutes ago, watching him with their open, attentive faces.  When he looked up, he caught the children's look, caught their Fräulein's eyes—caught her little, soft smile, and realized it was a look he hadn't seen before.  It was a warm look, a kind look—a grateful look, perhaps; he knew she wanted him to be close like this with his children, and yet, perhaps it was something more, a—

"Aren't you going to finish, Papa?" Gretl asked him, wiggling in his arms.

"You know the end, Gretl," he said, blinking, looking down at his youngest daughter.

"They fall in love and live happily ever after?"

Georg found himself glancing at Maria, and looked away, down to Gretl's bright eyes, which were commandeering his attention anxiously.  He stood abruptly and placed her on her feet as well.  "Yes," he told her.  "Of course they do."

"Of course," Marta repeated happily, smiling and settling into Fräulein Maria's arms.  Maria's smile changed into a different one as she looked down at Marta, and her expression formed into a laugh.  Georg abruptly made for the door. 

"Kid's stuff," Kurt was announcing derisively, lifting his chin.

Brigitta scowled at him.  "I saw you," she accused; "you were listening."

"Was not," Kurt replied, and Brigitta chucked a book at him.

The Captain opened the door.  "You might want to keep an eye on your charges, Fräulein," he admonished Maria, not bothering to look at her, and walked firmly out.  He could hear his children's voices rising behind him as he strode down the hall.  He was not at all considering the small smile on their little Fräulein's face as she had looked at him; he was not at all considering what it meant.


	10. The First Mountain

A/N: I've had this chapter in my pocket for a long time (two weeks!) and I'm posting it quickly before I decide to rearrange it once again.  It's supposed to be thoughtful and poetic, but it will probably come off very longish and cheesy, so, as always, if you have any corrections, advice, critiques, blather, rambling, or suggestions please send them my way :o)  

I made some minor changes to ch 9 (they don't affect the plot, though)—thanks, imnotacommitte.  lol, jessica97, I'm glad you stuck with the fic :o)  For those of you who've been asking, a scene from the movie (the Captain singing _Edelweiss_, obviously) is after this, and things will be a tad more romantic for that and the next few chapters.  At least _I _think they're more romantic. :o).  

Also, I meant to mention in ch 9 that the particular attention & insight re: Louisa (in that chapter and throughout) was inspired by imnotacommittee's 'Skipping Stones'.  If you haven't read that fic I highly recommend you do so :o) 

*

Chapter 10

It was Louisa's turn that day.  As always, she wanted the mountains.  The day was beautiful for it; Fräulein Maria had worn her hideous convent contraption on account of it; Max and Elsa were resigned to it, and the children excited.  It became rather a bigger production than certain others of the children's picnics had warranted.  For one thing, Georg simply couldn't imagine Elsa sitting on the grass, or even on a blanket, and had had the house servants come along with several lawn chairs.  For another, Max simply wouldn't countenance a picnic that provided food of any lower quality than he was accustomed to, and so there was wiener-schnitzel, noodles, all manners of chicken salads and quality cheeses—and of course wine, both red and white.

Maria, laughing, exclaimed at the proportions of the banquet; Kurt was delighted; and Louisa moodily protested that she preferred sandwiches.  The children, however, ate with enthusiasm, as children are prone to do, and now they were going their separate ways—the boys again at ball; Louisa and Brigitta exploring the country-side; Liesl, Marta and Gretl wandering their way into the edelweiss; their Fräulein was showing them how to weave the flowers together into crowns and wreaths.  Georg, a slight smile on his face, watched his children as he lounged beside Elsa and Max on the picnic blankets, where the three of them lingered over their wine.  

"I used to do this all the time," Maria was saying.

"When you were our age?" Gretl was asking, her voice eager.

She was laughing.  "No, before I was your governess.  I did it every spring from the time I knew what edelweiss was."

"Edelweiss?  This is edelweiss?" Marta was saying, poking her nose down into the sweet scent of the flower.

"You knew that, stupid," Kurt called over suddenly, while Friedrich had that ball.  "We picked it before.  And Father was always telling us, remember?"

"No, I—"

Friedrich threw the ball back at Kurt, hitting him squarely in the ear.  "Ow--!"

"Pay attention!"  Then a chagrined: "Sorry!"  And so it went on, the children talking, their Fräulein laughing, Kurt lifting his chin and telling his little sisters what was what, Friedrich being heedless, Louisa being silent, but with a smile on her face.  Georg idly shredded grass in his hands, lounging back, elbows on the ground and chest to sky, watching them. 

"Georg?"  Elsa's voice.  "You seemed distracted, poor dear.  Are Max and I really so boring?"

"Hm?  No, Elsa—no."  Georg, blinking, took up her hand in his own, studying its delicate whiteness, running the pad of his thumb up and down each finger.

Elsa laughed and removed her hand.  "We were speaking of Vienna, darling, and all its . . . diversions.  And—Georg?"

"Hm?"

"I asked you once before," Elsa began, her voice steady, but affecting humor, "and I'll ask you once again—what is it that brings you to Vienna?"  Her hand was suddenly back on his.  "I can see your heart is here—some of it, at least.  These mountains, your home, your children—tell me, Georg, what is it that brings you to Vienna?"

"It's you, of course, darling," he answered Elsa lightly.  "Of course, it's you.  What did you think it was?  Max?"

Elsa laughed—her questions had been serious, but theirs was an issue not to be settled by a mere question—but more, they both knew, through trial and error.  It was why he'd brought her here, wasn't it?  He knew she knew it too—she was just looking for his reassurances.  She had come here with expectations, and though since the stage had arrived for the children, he and the Baroness had had more time alone together, she was wondering if he was going to ask what they had both suspected he was perhaps bringing her into his home—his real life—to ask.  It was true: Georg had had his own expectations of himself regarding Elsa, some of which had not been met.     

But just now, he didn't want to think about it.  He didn't want to be plagued with questions.  He had hoped to forget, out here, the news and this wonderful, ill-begotten morning, whose sharp, wistful wind reminded him of his dead wife.  Spending the morning studying with his children had been pleasant, but there was a certain hollowness inside him that made him hunger for more—made him fear that he couldn't get enough of them, that he was asking too much of them, asking them to fill certain parts of himself they shouldn't have to fill.  

Georg rested his forearm lazily over his eyes, feigning sleep or exhaustion, so he wouldn't be expected to participate in Max and Elsa's light banter.  He turned his head, gazing out at the meadow, the edelweiss, the children, their little Fräulein, and the sky.  

"Like this, Fräulein Maria?" Marta was saying, holding up her rather pitiful chain of flowers.

And Maria was laughing, saying, "It doesn't matter how, Marta.  Edelweiss are always beautiful, any way you look at them."  Looking at Fräulein Maria, her cascades of edelweiss all around her—almost mitigating the ugliness of that dress, but not quite—his children surrounding her, he was reminded of the old Austrian folk tunes soon to be forgotten in the encroaching darkness, of singing to Agathe and his children—a memory already forgotten in the bitter present of his _own_ darkness.  _Bright, _he was thinking, watching them._ Clean and bright_.  It was the joy of his children, the way they were playing, in Marta's smile, in Gretl's face.  It was even in their Fräulein's dancing eyes, high cheekbones and laughing lips, golden hair and slender figure: all of them so very clear, so light-hearted—pure, brilliant; 'clean and bright,' like the song. 

Agathe had been so fond of music—so terribly fond.  She'd liked singing, but she preferred his, and so she would hang on him, her sweet voice eager in his ear, until he'd sing to their children, until he'd sing to her—'those Austrian tunes you love so well, darling,' she would say.  But she loved all kinds of music—from the folk tunes, to dance songs—'because,' she would tell him, 'I get to press up close against you in public, something you would never allow, otherwise.'  Not only that, she loved jazz and tango, because they were risqué, classic orchestra, because it wasn't, Mozart ('I hear he came from a very fine town, darling,'), polka, because she thought it was funny, and every form of march, 'Because, Georg, they're all so military.  Straight, strict, severe—they remind me of you, until I get you alone with me, dearest—and why then you're as gentle as a—why Georg, you're a monster and untamed brute when you're alone with me.  A monster that will sing to me.  Sing to me, Georg, because everything's better with music.'

_Everything's better._  Agathe had known it.  Fräulein Maria knew it in her artless, honest way.  Even when she wasn't singing, music filled her in the way that it filled these hills.  It was vibrant, thrumming within her; her songs knew it and he knew it too.  And yet, somehow, this constant reminder of song was not displeasing.  The memories of Agathe—the really sharp ones, the ones in which he could hear her voice and feel her lips, knowing exactly what she would have said to one thing or another—these memories passed by in his mind and they were almost pleasant, though poignant—like memories of a vacation that was over and impossible to repeat.  And so Georg, letting lethargy weigh his back down into the grass and sun beat down on his face, remembered Agathe, remembered song, and for once feeling only joy in the bittersweet memories. 

 "Not tired of it yet, Fräulein Maria," Louisa huffed, flouncing down next to her governess.  Louisa had been running; her cheeks were red and her eyes bright.

"What?" Maria asked her, choosing not to mind the fact that Louisa had taken up some of her flowers and was shredding them in her hands.

"You said if I did this every day I'd get tired of it."  Louisa paused and tossed the flower aside.  "Well, we haven't done it everyday, but you see we're not bored yet, thank you," she said, waving out in the direction of her siblings.  Then she muttered (none too quietly): "I prefer this to yodeling."

Fräulein Maria threw back her head and laughed.  They had been practicing their play for a while now—excluding Georg, Elsa and Max, 'because,' Gretl had explained to them with a frown, 'it's a surprise.'  "I know what you mean, Louisa," her Fräulein told her.  "I know what you mean because I have the same problem.  I'm not sure that it gets any better than this.  The air is so clear we could hear a bird sing from miles away, if we really listened."  She winked at Louisa.  "I must say I enjoy the company, too," she said, with an arch smile.  

Suddenly, she caught his eyes on her, and her laugh fell away—but the smile did not.  It was the same, warm gentle smile that she had given him that morning, full of an innocence that made him—made him ache, but for what, he did not know.  For youth, perhaps, for the past, for a future unmarred and untouched by the bleeding black in the center of a Nazi flag.  Idly, he studied the governess.  _Small and white_, he thought, and inwardly, he chuckled.

Agathe would have been deliciously appalled at the thought.  'You're very schmaltzy, you know that?' she used to tell him.  'You don't look it, but deep down, really deep (not just under your clothes—what, darling?—I'm serious!), underneath all that severe discipline and sardonic wit, you're really just another bad poet. You're my own Goethe—without the talent, technique, or just plain taste.  But you're far more handsome, dear,' she used to hurriedly add, smirking.  

Amused, despite Agathe—or perhaps because of her, he let the thoughts of _Edelweiss _blend with the vision of his children on this hill, this little Fräulein governess laughing with her bright eyes.  How long had it been since he watched something beautiful?  How long would it be before he could do it again?  What were the odds of this—these green, unblemished hills; his children, content and happy; country girls outside, unafraid, talking laughing, smiling—what were the odds of this lasting?   

"I can never figure out which you love more—your wife, your country, or your children,' Agathe would have said, at that point.  And then he would give her his arch look, raising a stern brow, giving her a mocking, laconic: 'wouldn't _you _like to know?'  And then he would step up to her, his voice suddenly rough with his desire, and speak into her lips: 'I love them all, beautiful, and that's why you love me.'  And laughing, she would cock her head and go on with her musings: 'Or maybe it's just yourself that you love best—' and then at his annoyed expression she wouldn't speak any more, whether to placate him or tease him further, because her mouth would be lost on his.

Some of the children were singing, now.  Their little Fräulein had been telling them the words and notes to a new song—but half of them were engaged in some demented kind of yodeling that they had been practicing for the past few weeks, and only a few were focused on listening.  He had been right some while back when he had accused his children of singing atrociously.  Marta was lisping and Gretl was out of tune, and when was Friedrich going to control that voice of his?  'I'm tired of singing,' Kurt complained, and Brigitta poked him while Louisa lay back and covered her face with her hands.  And Georg found himself laughing.

He missed Agathe; he did.  He missed the strength she would have given him, so that he could face what he knew was coming for this land he loved so much—what would be coming for his family, who would not be given the choice to weather the oncoming storm by going on as they had been.  He missed waking up beside her and seeing her fresh, lovely face—he'd missed it this morning with a sudden sharpness that had taken his breath away.  And yet, it was easy, sitting there on one of the dappled sun-lit mountains of Austria, to feel only warmth and pleasure in memory of things gone, even to put aside his foreboding at the new developments today of Hitler and the Third Reich.  

Georg remembered what he had first thought on his arrival back home in Vienna: that he didn't want his children to change, that he feared them changing, feared them growing apart from him and each other.  Now his frame of mind was different.  His children were not a picture; they were beautiful and alive, wonderfully alive.  He wanted them to learn, to become the adults he hoped they would be.  In growing and changing, his children remained unchanged—they remained alive, and happy, as much as he had been stagnant in these past dark years.  _Bloom and grow, children, _he thought to himself absently._  Bloom and grow. . ._

Even if he ever had to go so far as leaving this place—Heaven forbid—if his children could adapt, could apply themselves to wherever they ended up, could change, a sense of permanence would remain.  Things around them could change and die; the Anschluss could come—but his children would thrive and _that _was the Austria _he _knew.  _This _was the Austria he knew—his children happy on its verdant hills. __

He was endlessly thankful for that realization Fräulein Maria had given him, when he had walked into his home to find his children singing once again.  Seeing that, seeing Gretl and flowers in Elsa's hands after hearing that, had given him so much understanding.  Gretl, edelweiss, Elsa—three beautiful symbols left in a world that was disappearing, bright points giving him hope and faith in the midst of his own darkness.  And here it was again: his family, his hills, and a woman he thought he loved.  

Some of the children were singing, now, and he was half-smiling, listening.  Fräulein Maria's voice blended with theirs, clear and vibrant and strong in the midst of their more tremulous voices.  _Bless my homeland, _he thought, suddenly, fervently, emphatically. _Bless my homeland forever_.


	11. Edelweiss

A/N:  Once you get past the first paragraph in this chapter it's all smooth sailing; I promise you it's what you want.  And if it is or isn't please tell me what you think because it's really nice to know.  I'm going to be out for a while, but maybe I'll work on the fic a bit during the TWENTY-ONE HOURS of traveling I'm about to do if you all seem to want more :o)

Thanks to Amy for ruminating with me about the night cap.  

I had to do an ungodly amount of research just to find the name Selzak.  Thought y'all would find that immensely interesting.

*

Chapter 11

The Captain unbuttoned his jacket and removed it methodically, laying it carefully over the back of one of his chairs.  Elsa had acted so strangely, he was thinking.  He could still feel where she had kissed him, a warm, burning spot on his temple.  Half of him had wanted to follow her down the hall, to turn her around and press her to him—to kiss her fully and fill himself with her scent, her image, her eyes.  He had known then, somehow—as he knew more firmly now—that it wouldn't fix anything.  Frowning, Georg looked away from the bed and went to stand beside one of his windows.

What had happened, then?  He had been laughing in a subdued sort of way after Gretl, her excited 'It'll be my first party, Father!' still in the room after she had gone.   Max had been busy drinking and Elsa had fallen into a peculiar silence.  

'I'm so glad you've finally decided to throw me a party, Georg,' she had murmured suddenly, into the lengthening silence.  'And it's a proper introduction for me, don't you think?'

'Hm?' he had replied.  'Oh, naturally.  The children will enjoy it, at any rate.'  Gretl's comment had reminded him of how little his children had had of their old life since their mother had died; Gretl had seen none of it.  She would be the belle of the ball, Georg had thought sardonically—that is, if he let her, which he wouldn't.  Inwardly, he had chuckled.  His children might think he had gone soft—but a bed time was a bed time.  Liesl would scowl and want to stay up.  Her little Fräulein would smile and tell her: "next year, maybe," in that light, encouraging way she had of hers.

'A sort of:  Elsa, meet Georg's Salzburg.  Salzburg, meet Elsa,' the Baroness had gone on, looking at him rather curiously—both brows raised, her eyes searching his face.

'As if they didn't already know you, my dear,' Max had interjected, waving his hand and pouring himself another glass from the decanter.

'But your friends don't know me, Georg; I think I mentioned that,' Elsa had replied, looking at the Captain, ignoring Max.  Abruptly she had tilted her head and smiled.  She'd reseated herself on the divan where she had sat when he had sung to his children_, _and gestured to Max for her own glass. 'Your little song was lovely, Georg,' she'd informed him, then.  She had glanced for a moment to the corner, the spot between the luxuriously converted stove and the marble topped dresser, and then away.

Georg hadn't seen the direction of her gaze.  He'd only just turned his head, his eyes suddenly focusing on her.  'My little song?' he'd asked, a smile tugging at his lips.  'If I didn't know better, I'd think you were trying to insult me, darling.'

She'd laughed heartily and coyly looked aside.  'Well, you're not Selzak, darling; we all know that.  I was telling Max how I wished I'd had my harmonica.'

Georg had blinked several times, not sure whether to laugh or scowl.  'Please don't tell me you can play harmonica,' he had said finally.

Elsa had laughed again.  'I said I wished I'd brought it, not that I play, darling.'

'Oh.'  Georg nodded, his eyes once again falling away from her face and wandering thoughtfully around the room.  His gaze had been introspective, not really seeing the room before him—but his eyes had landed on the guitar, and then his gaze had focused.  He had smiled a little, remembering Maria proffering it to him, remembering the full and guileless smile on her face and in her eyes as she had said, 'The vote is unanimous.  _You, _Captain.'  There had been a hint of mischief in her eyes, too; he was sure of it.  She had wanted to hear him play—and she had known that his initial answer would be an emphatic no.  

He should have known.  He had been watching her as he poured Max a glass; she and the children had had that look about them, as if planning something devious.  He just hadn't expected it to be . . . He hadn't played in years; the very idea had caught him off guard.  'That was a very very long time ago,' he had told Maria; it was past; it was over; it was no more.  It was not a part of his present life.

And yet there had been the little Fräulein, insistent.  Had she known that her smile—Brigitta's smile, and Gretl's hopeful gaze, and Louisa's abashed wistfulness—would persuade him?

It had felt like accepting an offer to go back in time, to remember when his mother and his first tutor had taught him how to find the notes and strum the instrument, to use his deepened voice properly and sing the foolish, passionate thoughts that had seemed at that age to want to burst through his throat.  It had given him to remember later years, seeing a young, gorgeous blonde woman, keeping time with her foot to music that wasn't there at a stuffy dinner party, demanding song, demanding dance, and idly wondering, with a wink in his direction, if young sailors sang at all?  And to remember years even beyond that, when he had been married to that very same beautiful, laughing girl for more than a decade, and she had become his lover and his life and the mother of his children—and that there had been days, sitting next to her, when he had sung to his children, looking at them all around him and loving them with a pride and a joy that had only recently been reawakened in him.

Looking at her, her out-stretched arms, her instrument, her bright and smiling face, it was impossible to refuse her, in a way, Georg had mused.  Even before her guitar was in his hands he had known what he was going to play, and his fingers had gone straight to it on the frets, even before he remembered the notes themselves.  It had been in his mind since that day on the hill-side, when they had gone to the mountains to satisfy Louisa's demand for a picnic.  Out there, the words had naturally fit the tiny, quaint—undeniably beautiful—flower, but they had also oddly seemed to fit his children, playing in the country-side, and Maria, both a friend and mother to them, cherishing and capturing the spirit of this land he loved so much.  _Edelweiss . . ._

The words were still in his head.  It was the Third Reich, he knew, the threat of shadow over-spilling onto that sun-dappled country-side, the dread of the future that made _Edelweiss _so precious in his mind now, like a memory—or a promise—of something good.  Standing alone in his room now, and weary, Georg rubbed his temple, passing a hand before his face and closing his eyes.  He saw the image of a pair of blue ones earnestly meeting his own and snapped them open again.

He closed the window, shutting the night air out, and restlessly sat down in the chair opposite his bed, staring at the pristinely made-up sheets and comforter, the single, shallow pillow.  He bent to systematically remove his boots, one at a time, trying put the shadowed future out of his mind for a moment.  He summoned again to mind those moments of happiness, singing of edelweiss in front of his children.  

It had never been Agathe's favorite, but Brigitta, as a baby, had never been willing to stop crying for anything else, and he had taught the words to Liesl himself.  Gretl had been watching him with wistful fascination.  She must have never—or hardly ever—heard him sing, or play.  Brigitta had remembered; her eyes had been bright with unshed tears—the same went for Louisa, but she would never admit it, not in a million years.  Kurt, hard as he tried, hadn't been able to keep the smile off his face—there had been that lurking, shy grin, and Georg had found himself smiling at it, smiling at Max, whose brow was furrowed as he politely listened (still upset, Georg determined, about the loss of the Von Trapp Family Singers before their very inception), and laughing a little at Maria, who he had been so sure would smile back.  _Happy to meet me, _he'd thought mischievously—because whenever she met his eyes these days she was always smiling.

There was a youthful simplicity in that gaze.  Oh, Maria was not a child; he knew that, somewhere in the back of his mind.  Her vivacity, her optimism, her fresh outlook and her readiness to challenge what should be changed were not merely simply youthfulness or inexperience.  He did not think of her so simply, because the fact of the matter was: she _had _changed things.  She had the right of it, he believed, or at least the right of something.  Her hope—her zest for life, her vivacity—were not due to any lack of understanding.   There was a wisdom in her simple attitude that eluded him, that was even a maturity he longed for.  

But he hadn't been thinking all that, singing to his children earlier that night.  He'd simply known, when he met her eyes as he sang, that he hadn't wanted her to learn to stop; he hadn't wanted her to hide herself behind any polite smile of indifference; he hadn't wanted her to be afraid to meet his eyes, afraid to stare, afraid to look too much, lest someone be watching.  He hadn't wanted their friendship to be polite, fair-weather, or nominal.  With her he had been confident in a strange sort of way that it could be pure, true, and simple, as it was with his children.  _Bloom and grow, little Fräulein; _he had been thinking, even as he sang it, much as he had thought a week ago on the hill-side for his own children.  The thought had pleased him, even as he considered the beautiful shape of her neck, her jaw, her lips . . . her slight flush in the heat of the room.  _Bloom. . ._

Frowning, the Captain stood, jerking at his tie to yank it off and let it fall unceremoniously to the floor.  Pulling at his shirt to open up the collar and let the air get in, he padded over to the sideboard in his room to  pour himself a liberal amount of the cognac that stood at the ready.  Still scowling slightly, he took the decanter by the neck and brought along a glass in the other hand, bringing both over to the side table beside his chair.  

_Elsa, _he reminded himself, disgruntled.  Yes, Elsa. It was only natural that the Baroness would throw him into confusion, he supposed. She was certainly more worldly and sophisticated than . . . He took a mouthful of the drink and sat down again, his look still dour.  Whenever he thought of Elsa, he felt himself grow anxious.  He wanted to marry her.  He loved her.  And she loved him, in her own way.  She had taught him how to _feel _again.  And yet . . .

Elsa's eyes had met his across the room as he sang—on that last, contrived, overly-sentimental line before he began the repeat: _Bless my homeland.  _He had been thinking, naturally, of seeing Elsa on the hill-side, when the words had first come to him last week—he had been thinking of edelweiss, of his children playing, of their little Fräulein, teaching them to sing and laugh and live.  As he had sung he had smiled at the memory, and Elsa had smiled back, brightly and gratefully.  It had been a nice moment between them, a warm moment. 

Singing, the song, his children—they had put him at ease.  It had seemed right.  Elsa could be his wife, and a mother to these children.  And yet he and Elsa so often seemed to miss one another—just slightly, just a little bit each way, as if he was headed in one direction and she in a slightly different one.  He didn't expect it to be the same as it had with Agathe—in fact, he didn't want it to be.  But why couldn't anything in his life, for once, ever be easy?

'When do you think this old house will be ready for a ball, Georg?' Elsa had finally asked, into the silence that had followed her assurances regarding the dreaded harmonica.

'Soon,' Max had replied, finishing the last of his wine with a contented tap to his stomach.  'I want to get everyone used to the idea of the Von Trapp Family Singers.  Once all his friends see how very charming they are, Georg will certainly consent, and naturally, make me a boatload of money.'

'I most certainly will not,' Georg had answered absently, still pondering over the guitar in the corner.

'But when, darling?' Elsa had persisted.

Georg had blinked, eyes finally returning to Elsa.  'When what?'

Elsa had laughed a little, tossing her head in an exaggerated sort of way.  'Are you going deaf, my dear?  You didn't sound it when you were singing a moment ago.'

'I'm glad my humble offering met with your approval in some respect,' Georg had retorted, smirking, eyes now fixed on Elsa's.

'Humble?  Add a voice like that to seven children's and the last thing any offering will be is humble.  Ho, Georg, you stand to make a fortune off it as well.  Not as large as mine, naturally, but then again, you already have one, so you need it less.'

'Of course it did, Georg,' Elsa had replied simply, ignoring Max altogether.

Max had pursed his lips together and sighed, looking from Elsa to Georg and back again.  'Very well then.  I can see when I'm not wanted,' he'd concluded, rising.

'Can you?' Georg had interjected.  'I never noticed that quality in you before.'

'I'm wounded to the quick, Georg.  If your beds were not so comfortable, and your breakfasts not so delicious, and the service not so remarkable, I might just take leave of this house right now.'

'If only you would, my friend,' Georg had said mockingly.  'If only you would.'

'I don't have to stand for this.  I'm going to march right into one of your excellent guest quarters and have a tremendously comfortable night of sleep—and wait for better things on the morrow.  Good night, Elsa.  Georg—sleep on it, and don't throw away the opportunity of a lifetime.'

The Captain had waved a dismissive hand at him, but Max had already gone, out of sight before Georg could deny it or make a retort.  'That little zealot,' he had mused, shaking his head in the direction Max had gone.

Elsa had shifted, smiling restlessly.  'He's right about one thing, at any rate, Georg.  Your children really are wonderful performers.  I quite enjoyed their little show earlier this evening.'

'Yes,' Georg had agreed, laughing.  'They're very talented, when they put their minds to it.  I'm just glad Fräulein Maria is around to _put_ their minds to it, instead of letting their creativity find other . . . outlets.'  He had been thinking of the beetles Louisa had planned to put in Elsa's room, chuckling.

'. . .Yes,' Elsa had agreed, slowly, her eyes seeming to search his.  A relative silence had followed.  Elsa had been watching his face; Georg himself had been thinking of his children's outlandish puppet-show: the dancing couples, the scene changes that Gretl and Marta had pushed out and effected, Brigitta's solos, which had made him proud, their Fräulein's occasional hurried directions on top of the children's singing, which had made him laugh, and, of course, for the love of God, all that yodeling.  Whatever had possessed Max to order puppets to fit the _Lonely Goatherd _had had some measure of insanity in it.  And Maria, with an enthusiasm whose extent was serious and effect was light-hearted, had pulled it off.

Georg smiled, the cognac forgotten at his elbow.  He had been wrong.  Some things _were _easy.  Being with his children was easy now, as it never had been before.  Their simple and almost disproportionate joy when Max had told them they could keep the puppet-show had amused him to no end.  _Love them, _Fräulein Maria had told him.  _Love them.  _She had taught him how.  

He'd realized that so many times in the past few weeks.  He'd wanted to tell her, wanted to show how grateful he was to her, wanted her to know, as he had wanted her to know in the schoolroom just last week, how greatly he esteemed her.  Tonight had been just one more example of how indispensable she'd become, how she'd harnessed the irascible enthusiasm and excitability of seven children and put it to creative use.  

She'd come out from behind the stage, an expression of theatric exhaustion on her face, and had met his eyes and smiled.  'Well done, Fräulein,' he'd told her, and it hadn't seemed enough to convey all he was feeling.  The bit of fatigue in her face had disappeared, her expression brightening.  'I really am very much impressed.'

She'd shrugged, arms open, earnest modesty in her gesture.  'They're your children, Captain,' she had said.

_Yes but . . . _He hadn't known them; he hadn't seen their merit; he hadn't allowed himself to see it and it was she who had opened his eyes to it.  In that moment, and for the first time since after he'd returned from Vienna, he'd wished that she wasn't his children's governess.  The seven of them were permanently attached to her hip, and he never got the chance to speak seriously with the woman alone, to tell her sincerely and completely of his gratitude for her and respect toward her.

It was just as well, he had supposed in the next moment, catching sight of Elsa and making an awkward sort of bow to the little Fräulein.  He had wanted to say more to her, but his pride wouldn't have allowed him to self-deprecate completely anyway; besides which, conversation between them was not necessary in that respect.  The governess obviously knew what she had done for this household, or she would not have spoken to him so stridently on his return to Vienna.  She was capable of a great many things, and she appeared to know it.

Apparently, Elsa had known it too.  'My dear, is there anything you can't do?' she'd asked, her voice doubtful.

'I'm not sure I'll make a very good nun,' Maria had replied promptly.

That had set him to laughing.  It was continually surprising, whenever she chanced to bring it up, that she was a postulant.  She was entirely too vivacious, too passionate, too pretty, too . . . A _nun?  _No.  When he thought of it, the word 'waste' came to mind.  

Georg was not smiling now.  Glowering down at the liquor in his hand, Georg absently swirled the glass.  It wasn't right or fair to think of it that way, he knew.  A nun was as much as a woman as any other woman, except that she would never—never . . . It was simply that a marriage to God didn't seem the life for Maria.  Even her faith was boisterous; her devotion was not the quiet kind.  It was whole-hearted and vibrant, and given with so much passion and ardent fervor that sometimes the idle cynic in the back of his mind wondered if God Himself could stand it.  

It was just, he supposed, that she could make some man incredibly happy someday, and that lucky fate shouldn't be denied so that she could live alone without other human beings.  Georg took a large swallow of the cognac and let it burn all the way down his throat.  That lucky fate shouldn't be denied anyone.

'If you need any advice I'd be happy to help you,' Elsa had replied, obviously not as amused as he by Maria's comment.   

For a moment, that had given him pause.  The Baroness  was the last person—besides, perhaps, Fräulein Maria—who would make a "very good" nun.  Elsa had been making fun, obviously; it had been meant to be a joke—a very dry one, as Elsa herself hadn't acknowledged it.  She had gone on, striding confidently and gracefully into the foyer, where Max and the children had gathered.  Or maybe she hadn't listened to what Maria had said, and her reply had been merely thoughtless and absent-minded.  

And yet it _had_ crossed Georg's mind that Elsa had been sincere in her offer; could she have possibly made it to a purpose?  But then he had dismissed the notion.  Why Elsa would be happy to help Maria be a nun was beyond him.  And then Maria had passed him, with a wisp of frothy blue and the smell of something fresh, and he had nodded awkwardly and decided all over again that she should never be a nun at all.

Georg turned the empty glass on the table, tapping the rim and then turning it again.  He _was _restless tonight, he supposed.  Elsa had accused him of it, but he hadn't thought it.  Perhaps the Baroness was right; perhaps he was merely tired.  Perhaps that was the thing that had seemed . . . off, between them, tonight—why he hadn't been able to reconnect with her before they separated, despite that moment of smiling comfort when their eyes had met across the room as he had sung.

'Georg?  Are you feeling well?' Elsa had asked suddenly, into the silence after Max had gone.  'You are very quiet, tonight."

'I'm fine, darling,' he had replied, still thinking of the children's puppet show, of his gratitude toward their governess.

'Singing makes you restless, Georg; I can't allow it,' she'd teased, grinning.  He'd nodded absently, and her smile had faded into curiosity as she looked into his eyes.  "Have you been having trouble sleeping?—Or dreaming?"  She had laughed again then.  "Tell me it's not dreams, darling.  I'd hate to think I was keeping you awake at night."

"I've never felt better rested," Georg had replied, not noticing that she had been teasing him, not noticing that his response had been thoughtless in regards to her.

Elsa had blinked several times and then looked away, standing, suddenly looking uncertain.  "I'm rather tired myself, in fact," she had said abruptly, after a moment.  "I have a little headache.  I think I'll go to bed early tonight.  You know how I need my beauty sleep."

"No one needs it less than you, my dear," he'd said.  He had looked up at her, smiling, and had met her eyes.  Abruptly, his attention had focused on her again more fully.  She really had looked worn out, and he had stood, berating himself for not paying attention, for not noticing earlier.  He had closed the space between them, pleased at the sudden opportunity to be tender with her.  He had liked the idea of being able to take care of her, to treat her as if she was his wife and lover and they lived together, day-to-day, happy.  "Rest then, darling," he had told her softly, his fingers finding her temple.  His voice had been sincere, gentle.  "And I hope you feel better," he had added, as his hand fell away and his expression grew teasing, "or you'll never be able to survive yet another day with my children."

"Oh Georg," she had laughed, but her voice had been full and her eyes bright as she had looked up at him.  She had seemed . . . relieved, somehow.  Suddenly, and of her own initiative, she had leaned in and kissed him on the cheek, leaving him, somewhat startled, to watch her turn away and head toward her room.  It was then that he'd wanted to follow her and take her in his arms, but it had been because their parting had seemed so awkward to him.  He hadn't wanted it to be; he had wanted it to be comfortable, to be lover-to-lover in the way that she had made him long for.  Trying for that simplicity afterwards wouldn't have worked anyway.

Georg sighed and reluctantly poured himself another glass of cognac.  It wasn't fair to hope that his relations with everyone could be as simple as they were with his children, as simple as their little Fräulein governess had made it.  Perhaps that was the reason his eyes had drifted towards Maria's, instead of Elsa's, once again in the last bars.  He hadn't been able to help himself; he had been thinking of her, thinking of how singing like that drew him back into easier, more innocent times, how she somehow seemed a part of that, able to do that to him, bring him peace that way.  Like edelweiss, he had been thinking.  That way in which she had looked at him . . . 

Georg stopped drumming his hand on his chair, recalling it, recalling the way she would occasionally turn her head, and accidentally catch his eyes, her own eyes bright, smiling in a way that was content, eager, and shy—it was an innocent gaze, a young one, a refreshing stare that was so guileless that he truly hadn'tbeen considering the implications behind it.  __

He thought about it now, and dismissed it, downing another taste of the drink at his elbow._  So what?_  The governess could think what she liked.  

The notion he'd had while playing, that the song embodied both a hope and a memory, had struck him as overly-sentimental afterwards.  He'd laughed, chagrined, shrugging off the little Fräulein's eyes.  It had been a foolish offering, and there had been nothing in it.  He had just been glad he hadn't botched it and made and idiot of himself.  Offering to whom, anyway?  And then he'd tucked the guitar under his chin and been so relieved when Max broke the silence, because it set the children giddy, put Elsa to talking, and, eventually, sent Maria away.

Georg finished off the last of the drink, making his last preparations for bed.  In the morning, Elsa would be proven right.  He washaving trouble sleeping; he was troubled by dreams he couldn't remember in the morning, dreams of something precious slipping through his fingers because he hadn't thought to hold on tightly.

*


	12. Slacking

A/N: I'm posting this mostly as a I-don't-want-to-do-my-homework thing.  And I'm afraid that if I let it sit too long I might want to scrap it.  And I'm afraid imnotacommittee might get over-titillated if I wait too long ;o)

Thanks to everyone who's been asking about this; it means a lot to me.

Ok, credit where credit's due: the opening was probably inspired by INAC's Bats and Bouquets (hey everyone, go read that one!).  There are a few lines in here stolen from Anne of Green Gables, because I'm a miserable cheat.  A lot of this was written in October, so if there's something wrong, don't blame me, blame winter (and my homework, and life in general).

*

Chapter 12

Once Georg and Elsa commenced planning for the ball, the Captain abruptly remembered one of the reasons he'd stopped throwing balls, and just as promptly forgot why he'd agreed to Elsa's proposal to throw one.  More than once over the next week he found himself looking longingly out of his office window, where often, the governess and his children were laughing, singing, climbing trees, and acting, in general, like a pack of unruly wild heathens.  

A smile would turn down the corners of his mouth at their antics, and then, startled, he would turn back to Elsa, who had commandeered his desk for the interval leading up to the ball.  "I never knew you were such a dismal planner, Georg!" she had commented laughingly, slapping him on the shoulder and grabbing the fountain pen out of his hand to cross out his garbled and untidy instructions to the caterers.  

"You're the one who throws the parties, dearest," Georg had replied, shrugging.  "I merely go to them.  And stand about depressing everyone, I might add."  

"I'll cross you off the invitation list then, darling."  

"Please do," he'd said, and wished that that was all the planning he'd have to be involved in. At any rate, today, Elsa had released him from his duties early and with a gay laugh, telling him she would visit the florists on her own, as she needed to see her couturier for a new dress anyway, and would he be a darling and take care of hiring the band, as he'd said he would?  

He reveled in the idea of snatching these few hours alone.  It wasn't that  he didn't enjoy spending time with Elsa, it was just that with her, and his rejuvenated relationship with his children, and Max, who demanded attention with all the subtlety of Gretl, he was beginning to feel a bit claustrophobic.  In the past four years he had begun to nourish a need for solitude that he wasn't sure would ever be gone from him again.

He stood at his balcony, at last free of responsibility, and wondering suddenly where that little governess had got to—the children certainly were noisome this afternoon.  It was Louisa's day again already, picnic-time, but they had had to go without their father and the Baroness, who had been consumed all morning with planning.  

He would have thought they would have calmed down by now.  Frowning, he tried to block out their noise and absorb the peace and lovely tranquility of the yard, when his eyes lit on a solitary figure.  

For a moment, he tapped his fingers on the balustrade, merely watching.  Slowly, he smiled.  

Looked like someone else wanted some time off, too.

*

"Slacking, Fräulein?"  

She turned at the sound of his voice, mouth open, lips forming into a polite smile on seeing him.  "Just breathing, Captain."

Startled, he paused in his movement to stand beside her at the gate to the river, and now he stood, studying her.  He hadn't pictured her before as someone who needed a great deal of privacy or who would come out here to find it.  He wondered, for the first time ever, what she thought of being a governess, particularly his governess, or more correctly, his children's.  "Recovering?" he asked, tilting his head, brows raised.

"No, sir, more like . . . remembering.  I miss home, sometimes."

That took him a moment.  She seemed like such a permanent feature of the household that it was difficult to remember she hadn't always been there.  Advancing to the gate, he mimicked her posture, putting a hand down to lean against it.  He looked at her, amused, as she twirled the crown of edelweiss one of the children had made for her in her hands.  "You miss the Abbey, do you?  The Villa Trapp doesn't live up to the standards you're used to?"

"The food is much better," she admitted promptly, and then sighed.  "I adore your cook's strudel."

Georg chuckled.  "You and Max."

"But I do miss the sisters.  They've become my family; do you know what I mean?"

Idly, he reached out to the flowers to stop the rotation of the wreath in her hands.  Taking one of the blossoms out of it, he absently began to shred petals in his fingers.  "I should think there's enough family here to satisfy three sisters, Fräulein, if not more," he said finally.

"Yes," she conceded.  "If I may say so, I _do _like it here, Captain.  I like it very much."

He chuckled to himself, still looking down at the poor flower in his hands.  "You may say it any time you like."

"But the sisters are in some ways like my own mother I never had," she went on, and Georg glanced at her, perhaps surprised that she had more to say on the subject.  The children's governesses had never been exactly prone to volunteering personal information—then again, he had never sought a single one of them out before.  "They're always guiding me," Maria was saying, "even if I don't realize their wisdom, even if I resist guiding.  I didn't originally want to come here, you know.  It wasn't my decision."

Georg blinked.  "Oh?"

"You see?  The Reverend Mother always seems to know what's best for me."

"And has this been what's best for you, Fräulein Maria?" he murmured.  His tone was sardonic, but his voice was very light, and his hand brushed her arm, as if in question also.

She wasn't Elsa.  There was no confident, glib response, no caustic wit that reassured him that she wasn't as confused as her eyes were just now.  He didn't want there to be.  After so long not knowing what was best for him_self_—after needing her to show him what it was—it was refreshing to be confronted with her confusion, to know that she wasn't sure either and that he could question that in her.  

"Well, I think so, Captain," she said at last, shrugging.  "The Reverend Mother says it takes a bit of trial and error to find the will of God, and that nothing is written in stone.  I used to add 'Except for the Ten Commandments'—but now I do believe I know what she meant."  She paused, shrugging again, as if unaware that she was rambling.  At last she looked him in the eye and said steadily.  "I don't know if I was meant to come here, but I've tried my best."

"You've done well; no mistake about that," he told her gently.

In the silence that followed, it was she who looked away first.

"You're just like Louisa," she said presently, eying his hands.  "She likes to maul poor innocent flowers."

"Don't worry, Fräulein.  They stopped feeling things after you ripped them out of the earth."

"I'm sorry to hear it," she replied.  "They reminded me of my mountain.  I couldn't help myself."

"_Your _mountain, Fräulein?" he asked her, raising his brows.  "When did they start issuing Austria's mountains to convent girls?"

She shrugged.  "Austria has some to spare.  I love it all,--but I was little, you know, and I wanted one that was mine, just mine, for keeps."  

He knew that feeling; he had felt it up there in the mountains, thinking of Austria, and Edelweiss, and looking at everything he loved arrayed before him.  It was a longing to possess something you loved, possess it completely and emphatically, so that it belonged to you as your heart already belonged to it.  It was less ownership and much more mutual understanding, but he understood it—he understood what this little Fräulein was talking about, even though she was telling him she possessed a mountain.  

"I used to go out to that place," she was saying, "and it was as if nothing could touch me there, as if I knew every rock and tree and bird so well that they knew me as I knew them.  And the wind in your face, when you're up high like that—it's as though it wants to sweep you away, and you can almost _hear _song in it, and it's as though the mountains themselves are speaking to you, speaking and calling and singing, and—"

She had suddenly stopped, head tilted to the side, as if frozen.  "Yes?" he said, expectantly.

Fräulein Maria sighed, fidgeted, and looked chagrined.  "And that's all, really.  Sister Berthe always said I could talk a hind leg off a mule.  I do have this habit of saying whatever comes to me.  "   

"I like you to talk," he told her simply, and it was the truth.  Hearing her speak what was in her heart like that was both soothing and invigorating.  So few people did it—said what they thought and felt, and with such a wealth of passion.  He liked it; it reminded him of himself and some truth he was searching for now and couldn't quite understand.  "It's only honesty."

She nodded.  "That's what the Reverend Mother said.  Still, I'm working on it."

"Don't," he said abruptly, and was silent.

"Captain?" she queried, tilting her head to try to meet his eyes, which were gazing over the lake in front of him.  He had tossed the little edelweiss away.

"Truth is very precious," he muttered, "especially in these times."  _'The truth will set you free, Georg,'_ Agathe used to flute at him, tapping him reproachfully on the shoulder.  She would say it even now, with Nazis milling at the front door of their country.  _'The truth will set you free.' _ "The children's mother used to say that a good deal," he murmured.  

The little Fräulein blinked, surprised.  "Your wife?"

His wife.  He never called her that, even in his head.  In speech she was 'the late Baroness von Trapp' and 'the children's mother.'  In his head she was merely a presence, smooth and blonde and in white, with lace, because 'I don't care what all these modern ladies say, Georg; lace is pretty and it will be fashionable if I say it's fashionable'.  She was a sharp commentator in his mind and every once in a while his conscience, and a presence in troubled nights that made him ache in ways that were beyond the needs of his body.  He rarely spoke of her to anyone, let alone impertinent governesses who talked too much.  

But he had spoken of her, and the pain of her absence was suddenly tight in way it had not been for a long, long time.  Why was it _now, _when he had been allowed for a while to think that his life was in order again, that he kept thinking of Agathe?  Now, when he was at last at peace with his children; now, when he had brought Elsa here specifically to see . . . when this little Fräulein looked at him in that way, that one particular way that made him—

"You miss her, don't you?" she said, into his silence.

—and what did she bloody well think?  

Anger flared, and suddenly.  He was a widower with seven children, for Christ's sake; he didn't know the first thing about interacting with them without their mother.  Add to that the fact that he couldn't bring himself to ask Elsa, whom he loved, to marry him.  She had convinced him he didn't want to be alone any more—and yet he was still alone and his bed was still bloody empty, without that soft presence in it that could wrap her arms around you and tell you you would survive whatever was to come.  Of course he bloody missed her!—

He missed her like he missed those sunny days, when he had thought Austria had had a future.  He missed her like he missed youth, and innocence, and all those things that had been ripped from him with war and the death of a wife he had loved too much and missed too much now.  He missed her like—

She had come up beside him, almost so close as to be half behind him, and her hand was resting on the back of his upper arm.  His head turned with a surprised half a jerk.  He met her eyes—and there was that look again: heat in her eyes that he had dismissed in frustration and a glass and a half of brooding brandy—that warmth in her expression that was alive, compassionate, full of life and hope and another thing he didn't quite want to think of right then.  

"She is with you, Captain.  And somewhere, she's waiting," Fräulein Maria said simply, her voice earnest, alight with faith.

The things her eyes were doing to him made his voice sharp.  "Oh, you think so?"

"I know so," Maria replied, and her fingers tightened about his arm.  

It was a casual touch—that of a counselor and a friend.  A corner of his mind was amused, that she could be so free, when he had seen her also be so shy.  She was a wealth of contradictions, was Maria.  Snap at her, and she bit back—right where it hurt.  Tease her, and she was suddenly silenced.  Doubt for an instant—anything, himself, God, the world around him—and she overflowed with compassion, the true strength and passion behind her faith eager to reach out to anyone in need.  It was refreshing, but it was also very . . . very amusing.

It was in this vein of thought, and not any other, that a smile played about his lips, and his hand closed over hers.  He raised a brow and looked significantly at where her hand gripped his arm.  She loosened her fingers quickly, and bent her head, chagrined. 

Perhaps it was that tinge of blush and embarrassment; perhaps it was the strength and comfort she had given him with her assurances about Agathe, and perhaps it was all these things and an incomprehensible build up of what he had felt, watching her on the mountain-side, and later, giving her the words to _Edelweiss_ . . . but whatever it was, it compelled him to hold on to her hand, to move his thumb into the warm cup of her palm, so that he could guide her fingers to touch the spot above his heart.  

Maria smiled ruefully and pulled her hand away.  He smiled too, and looked out over the river, and was reminded of something he hadn't been reminded of in a long time: of sinking himself inside someone and . . . letting go.

"I should see what the children are up to."

"You should.  You're an unconscionable slacker, Fräulein, and if you don't improve, I will simply have to let the Reverend Mother know that of all her trials, this was a definite error."

"Why . . . thank you, Captain."

Georg turned back to the governess, a little surprised at her teasing reply.  "Any time, Fräulein," he said, raising a brow, and making as if he was looking her over.  "Just remember, in the future, I will not always be so . . . solicitous of you."

She blushed, but did not look away, and they held each other a moment with their smiles.

Suddenly, she blinked.  "I really must go."

"I'm not stopping you, Fräulein," he said, gesturing back toward the villa casually.

She looked like she had to think about it for a moment.

"Oh," she replied.

He laughed, gave her a wry half smile, and presented his arm, at which she laughed too, and eventually took, and they made their way back across the green and back up to the house.


End file.
